As Long as it's All of Us
by TiB0n3s
Summary: "Lucille! Doll, what are you doing home?" Dark hazel eyes wide in panic above a lying mouth in the face of the man she'd loved for years. "Who is this?" Anger so thick it could choke her. "Doll it's not what it looks like." A trespasser in their bed. Shocked eyes as she slammed the first door shut in her wake, pictures crashing to the floor from where they had hung on the walls.
1. Chapter 1

The morning was bright, boasting a clear sky as the fog from the chill of the night's rain rolled a gentle haze over the pond's surface and down the streets, beating a slow retreat as the sun crested the horizon. It was serene, a gasping breath of relief after the madness of Negan, the Wolves, and the herd. For once it seemed they had run off all their enemies, and even if they were only hiding away to lick their wounds, maybe, just maybe, they were nearing an end to all the violence.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" Rick heard Michonne call after Carl from the kitchen as the teen bounded down the stairs, his footfalls thunderous against the wood floors.

"Lu's back," he shouted, racing through the front door as the dark woman cast a shared a lingering look with Rick, sitting on a couch with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, a knowing smile settling on her mouth. The simple domesticity was lost on neither of them; they had all earned it, _won_ the right to it.

The former Sherriff's Deputy grinned back, setting his mug on the end table and hauling himself to his feet. He draped an arm over the swordswoman's shoulders as the pair made their way from their home, following Carl's path to the front gate. "You think he'll be able to convince her to stick around this time?" Michonne asked her companion with a snicker as they drew closer to the old red Chevy Step-side and the gathering residents drawn like bees to honey by the resources she had no doubt brought from her latest haul.

Rick huffed a laugh, scratching at his beard and his boots scraping the asphalt as they draw nearer. "Which one, Carl or Daryl?" he wondered aloud.

Ahead of them, Carl's dead sprint slowed to a stop as the crowd unloaded the bed of the truck. Cardboard boxes, coolers, insulated cases were passed down in a line by Alexanadrians casting nervous glances up at the cab of the old vehicle.

"Dad!" Rick registered Carl shout before his son darted around the hood towards the driver's side door.

Then he saw it. Bullet holes sprayed up and down the side of Lu's Chevy. The windshield and back glass were riddled with them, the passenger window completely shattered, and the bench seat was a mess of singed foam and cloth from the sheer number of holes in the back rest.

"Holy shit," he cursed under his breath, hurriedly making his way around the abused truck to the woman, his son, and the shaggy-headed bowman on the other side.

"-came out of nowhere," came Lu's smoky, pained voice, the curtain of her hair hiding her face as she leaned out against the ruined door. "Maybe three shooters, who knows, it all came out of the damn tree line. Completely blindsided me."

Rick had never seen the woman before him nearly as undone as she was now. Lu's dark hair was splattered with blood, shards of glass, and dirt, and the braids she had always woven throughout its mass coming undone. Daryl stood before her, pushing her hair away from her face and running his fingertips along the gash at her temple, the blood covering half her face like war paint still wet and tacky. His face pinched with concern as fresh waves of pain made Lu draw in a sharp breath, tensing suddenly and gray eyes shutting tight against the sharp edge of it. Carl stood beside Daryl, clutching Lu's rifle reverently to his chest while a pile of sodden cloth at his feet seeped a crimson burden along the asphalt, the boy's one eye shadowed with worry.

"Let's get you out of there, darlin'," Daryl chided, looking over at Rick as he pulled Lu's left arm over his shoulders. The former deputy stepped forward quickly to cast her right arm over his own shoulders, moving her gently from the wreckage of the truck cab so they could assess her injuries.

Michonne, Abraham, and Rosita strode toward them from the bed of the truck, expressions in varying degrees of worry settled on their faces at the sight of Lu being carted by Daryl and Rick. Once they set her on the porch of the nearest house Lu spat a mouthful of blood to the ground, her left arm pulled close to her chest as she wiped at the blood coating the right side of her face.

Lu had found Carol in the woods during the Terminous incident, had nearly killed her, too as she'd spent months beforehand scavenging and hunting down the Wolves. Rick still didn't know how Carol had convinced her to help, but between the two of them they had decimated the cannibals; Lu rather lived by a "scorched earth" policy when dealing with Claimers, Wolves, and cannibals.

" _How many walkers have you killed?" Rick asked the woman, Lu, standing at the edge of the tree line. She was quiet, dangerous, and even though he still wasn't certain if he'd forgiven Carol, she'd found this woman and together they'd saved them._

 _The sleeves of the woman's duster were rolled up her forearms, displaying the canvas of ink and skin over sinew and muscle. She spared him only a brief warning glare with narrowed grey eyes then went back to reloading her magazines and cleaning her rifle._

" _Please," he prompted. "How many?"_

" _Dozens, maybe hundreds. They don't end, only the living do," she rested her rifle against her leg and pulled a long rope of braided hair out from under the back of her duster, unbinding it carefully and plucking out pieces of the leaf and twig._

 _He put a hand on his hip and kicked one leg out, shifting on the uneven ground, then "How many people have you killed?" and waited as he heard the rest of his companions go silent behind him._

 _She combed delicate fingers through her long hair for a moment, rearranging thinner braids woven throughout its mass before turning to face him head on. "At least twenty," she affirmed with an expression he couldn't quite place. "At least twenty_ today _."_

 _And for some reason Rick couldn't quite comprehend, he knew it wasn't madness he saw in her face, it was something much less forgiving. So, all that was left was the final question. "Why?"_

" _Because people like your cannibals don't hide in the shadows anymore, they hide in your hope that the good people outnumber the bad. I hunt down the people that need hunting because I know better."_

Though Rick had initially had his reservations, he couldn't deny that Lu was a strong fighter and, eventually, an even better friend. She gave Abraham a run for his money, both in tactics and poker, recounting her time in the company of rogue Marines, the first and only group she had fallen in with since the beginning of it all. She rattled off engineering and chemical something-or-others with Eugene and plants and cooking with Maggie and Carol. Rosita, Tara, and Sasha she taught to fight and how to run, and could she ever run; not even Glenn was so nimble. Eventually, Daryl had taken her hunting with him and though they had spent the better part of the day off in the woods, they'd returned with two bucks and a string of rabbits. Everyone slept on full stomachs for days after.

It was with Carl and Judith that Lu shone through, the way she guarded them without question or prompt. In the first months she had been wary of his daughter, and Rick saw her heart break every time she so much as glanced at the little girl, like she was afraid Judith would disappear if she looked too long. Then the tornado had come and Lu sang to Judith, capturing the baby's attention with slow, soothing words and the tap of her fingers against her thighs, calming his daughter's fear with songs that weren't ever meant to sound so sweet. She taught Carl the words to every song she sang, the siren at the storm's center drawing them all in to drown, and it was almost like watching Maggie with Beth back when she was alive and the world wasn't so grim. Slowly, she began to heal them. Even Rick himself sang along when she tapped out the rhythm of Country Roads; they'd all sang through the worst of it.

Then Aaron had found them and they had settled into the Alexandria community...well, most of them had settled. They had all seen Lu jump at sounds and silence during the night, prowling through the house they'd been assigned; unable to sleep and a pair of knives she had refused to give up within reach of her fingertips at all times. Like the rest of their group she didn't trust the people of the community they'd been invited in to; but unlike them, she saw danger in every corner and duplicity in every uncertain smile.

"Spent too long wandering," she offered that last day, hugging Carl and Judith tight and pressing her forehead to Daryl's before retrieving her weapons and walking through the front gate. She had left with a promise to visit which had turned into deliveries of supplies she had scavenged once every other week, a shared nod with Carol, pudding for Carl whenever she found some, and a lingering embrace for Daryl before she was gone again.

That first night the group had spent in the Alexandria community was nearly two months past, the quarry walkers, the Wolves, and the invading herd dealt with all with her assistance. But she hadn't been around in the last two weeks, Lu wouldn't know anything about Jesus, the Hilltop, or the Saviors they had killed; she wouldn't know the threat the Saviors still posed to Alexandria even as they licked their wounds in silence.

"Just get me wrapped up, Rick," Lu insisted, a detached expression settling on her face as she looked over the streaks of blood on her fingers and swiped at the still-wet blood running down her face. "I promised Carol a few bars of chocolate this time 'round," she offered conspiratorially then leaned forward to push herself up off the stairs, clenching her jaw against the fresh new hell pounding through her veins.

"Naw," Daryl insisted and pushed her back gently by the shoulder. "Ya stay here, I'll get Carol," he told her, waiting for her to settle as the early morning light streaked across her eyes. When she waved him off, the shaggy-haired bowman pressed his forehead against hers, "Stay here, Lu, just...stay." Then he pulled back and made his way off to Carol's house.

Rick smirked at Lu and she grumbled under her breath. "That's not such a bad idea, you know." She gave him a scathing sidelong glare and quirked an eyebrow as if to ask 'is this _really_ the time?' So, he cleared his throat and shifted on his feet, hands setting on his hips before he glanced back to the ruined red Chevy. "You want to tell us what happened, Lu?" he asked, Denise walking up to the group with bottles of clean water and bandages.

As he and Carl helped her to clean off her face, Lu recounted the events of the night before. "The shots came out of nowhere, Wolves or Claimers trying to steal what I had in the truck. Two or three shooters, might have been more, hidden in the tree line away from the road. I backtracked around so they wouldn't know where I was headed, ran them around in circles all night, but… Rick they were waiting for me." Her eyes fluttered and she squeezed them shut, clenching her jaw and taking steadying breaths before finally glancing up at him again. "I thought we had finished off the last of the Wolves."

Michonne shot the former deputy a look as he pressed a bandage against the woman's temple, knowing Lu was lucky to have only been grazed by the bullet even bleeding as heavily as she was. They were going to have to do something about the Saviors, they'd come entirely too close to killing one of their own and Lu was a friend that none of them could afford to lose. They certainly shouldn't have found their gates this soon.

Abraham stepped up to Lu, holding out his hand for hers with a bristly ginger grin. "Sounds like you could use some food and some R&R then, Lulu," he taunted as she placed her hand in his, pulling her to her feet.

Lu's knees gave out then, she tilted into Abraham and as both he and Rick went to steady her, they heard a gasped "Oh shit," from Rosita. Their gazes cut over to her, but her eyes were glued to the porch where he and Daryl had deposited Lu before the ginger man had pulled her up. The wood of the porch drank in a dark, viscous puddle like a sponge and then they all knew and the grey-eyed woman's body finally started to give out: Lu was injured far worse than they had originally suspected.

"Dad...Lu's duster," Carl insisted, pulling the dark leather from her shoulders, Rick and Abraham catching her as her grey eyes rolled to the back of her head and she slumped against them.

It wasn't just the one bullet, and they certainly hadn't _just_ grazed her.

* * *

Lu woke to acid running beneath her skin and lurched up off the bed with a barely contained scream.

"Please do not move, Lu, I would be remiss if I did not state for the record that you have been gravely injured," came Eugene's voice from her right side.

Gripping her side against the pull that lit a fire in her bones, Lu smirked, "Is that why I feel like I'm on fire?" She glanced up at him from beneath the waves of her dark hair, "Thought you'd decided to make swiss cheese of me."

The entirely literal man blinked at her as she pushed herself to sit up on the bed, "No, Lu, one first needs a cow before they can make cheese and we don't have any heifers here."

She hawked out a gasping laugh, grinning against the pain running rampant across her nerves. Then taking measure of the bandages wrapped around her arms and the gauze taped to her side, she huffed a sigh. "Babysitting duty, huh?"

"I believe you are attempting to joke again, but Rick did charge me with watching over you," he confirmed. "Given the severity of your injuries and the great possibility of infection, there was considerable cause for concern that you would not recover."

As Lu eased her legs over the edge of the bed a scream came from outside the room, a decidedly female scream, something was very wrong. She forced herself off the bed, black spots like photo-negative disco lights around her vision as she pulled on her boots and grabbed her coat off the back of the chair Eugene had been watching over her from. "What the hell is going on?" she demanded, shoving her arms into the sleeves of her weathered leather duster, ignoring the pain from the multitude of wounds as best she could.

"Maggie is experiencing complications with her pregnancy," he explained as he shadowed her steps into the room where the woman's screams originated.

"-her to the Hilltop, they have a doctor who could help," came Rick's voice.

As Lu rounded the corner on a limp Rick, Carl, Sasha, Abraham, and Aaron all turned to watch her. "Lu, what are you doing out of bed?" Rick strode toward her and gently took hold of her shoulders, attempting to herd her back to the other room. "You're still bleeding and Denise only pulled those bullets out an hour ago."

"Not a chance, Rick, if Maggie's hurt I'm going to help," she insisted, pulling her injured arm from the man's grasp. As she looked about the room, her brow furrowed, "Where's Glenn?"

Rick sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck and shaking his head. "He, Michonne, and Rosita went after Daryl; Carol took off last night."

"Why wo- No, we'll talk on the ride out." Lu hobbled over to Carl, damning the pain in her side even as she put as much pressure against it as she was able. She tipped up his hat with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, "Where'd you put her, hun? We're gonna need her if those assholes take another potshot at us."

Carl smirked knowingly and ran to retrieve Lu's rifle as Abraham, Sasha, and Aaron left the room to get what they'd need to transport Maggie to this Hilltop place. Even Eugene nodded to her as he shuffled around her, careful not to touch her and aggravate raw but healing wounds.

"Lu, you've been shot, you need to stay and get better, heal up at least a little before you go back out there. Hell, if something goes wrong and we have to stay longer than a few days...you're the only person I trust to keep these people alive," he leaned down just enough to look her right in the eyes, blue clashing with gray in a battle of wills but he already knew he'd lost.

"I wouldn't give half a bucket of bricks for this place, Rick, and you know that. Maggie's my friend, the group matters, not this place. If you want to argue, you'll just have to do it while we're on the road taking _care of Maggie_ ," she stated with finality, narrowing her eyes and daring the former deputy to push the subject.

Rick sighed and grimaced as Carl barreled into the room with Lu's rifle and handgun a few minutes later. "As long as it's all of us, we can do anything," Lu told him with a smirk.

How wrong she had been.

* * *

She'd gotten separated from the group, offered to scout out ahead, she remembered that much as the re-opened gash at her temple bled down her face.

 _The Saviors._ Rick had told her about them on the way to the Hilltop. _They'd set up a blockade on the road; eight men in total and Rick, in spite of Abraham's warning, didn't want to attack them. They'd stepped out of the RV and Rick put his hands up, offering to make a deal._

 _"Give us all your stuff," the mustached man had demanded with teeth too straight and a geeked-out grin, "We'll probably have to kill one of you. That's just the way it is, but then we can start moving forward on business. All you have to do is listen." The man had said that they don't negotiate._

In a haze, Lu recalled comparing Abraham's mustache to the Savior's, and as she coughed up mouthful after copper mouthful to ease the pressure in her chest, she laughed to herself.

 _"What if it's your last day on Earth?" she'd heard Rick ask._

 _"No, but that is a good thing to bring up. Think about it. What if it's the last day on Earth for you? For someone you love? What if that's true," the mustached Savior had rebutted. "Maybe you should be extra nice to those people in that RV, 'cause you never know... Just like that. Be kind to each other. Like you said... like it was your last day on Earth."_

" _They sound like Wolves to me," she'd snarled once Rick and Abraham were back in the RV. "Like people who need hunting..."_

"Whatta fucker," Lu mumbled, blood spilling from her mouth, she pulled the bandage from around her left arm to bind the burning hole in her thigh.

 _They had encountered another, larger group of Saviors blocking the road later, maybe sixteen of them with vehicles. Rick had looked to her and Abraham but they'd all known shooting their way through wasn't likely, they'd turned around slowly to the symphony of a Savior firing a rifle in the air as they retreated._

" _Waste of bullets," she'd mouthed to Carl, then out the window she shouted "I can DO THAT, TOO!" The bullet wounds, oncoming fever, and dehydration were making her delirious and angry and_ dangerous _._

Clawing her way out of the ditch, Lu lost her grip and fell backwards, smacking her skull into a tree, rifle digging into the tender skin of her wounded back. "Aargh fuck," and she cried out, unable to help the ragged scream that pulled itself from her throat, white lights dancing with the black spots against her brain to a cinematic horror show, flashes of recent memory flitting before her eyes.

 _The line of dead chained together across the road._

 _Michonne's dreadlocks._

 _Daryl's crossbow bolts._

 _Saviors firing at them from the woods on both sides of the road. Rick cutting the chain, the dead loose everywhere, and the realization that "They want us in this direction."_

" _Maggie's fever is worsening."_

 _Turn around._

 _"I believe in you, Rick."_

"Look at that," Lu didn't recognize the voice that ricocheted through her skull. "We got ourselves a straggler."

Hands grab at her roughly, snatching away her rifle, dragging her by the shoulders of her duster. "Lemme go, pencil dick," she threatened weakly, swinging her fists out to catch naught but air, her vision swimming.

"Come on, sweetheart, it's time to meet the man."

 _A giant wall of logs. Tire marks on the road. The logs erupt in flames. Drive away._

" _They're probably waiting for us right now. So, they're ahead of us, probably behind us. But they're not waiting on us, per se, they're waiting on this rust bucket. And they don't know the moment-to-moment occupancy of said rust-bucket. I'll have them thinking we're playing their game. All phases of the turn, level after level, move after move, I'll keep them spun. I assure you, I will. I got something for you. It's a recipe, and it ain't gazpacho. How to Build Bullets 101. Abraham can show you where, just in case. Thank you for this."_

 _Eugene._

 _"You're a survivor."_

 _Abraham._

" _As long as it's all of us."_

 _Maggie._

" _I'll take the lead, follow close and don't get lost."_

 _Running through the trees._

 _Whistles._

" _Go. Go!"_

 _There's something by the road…cars, trucks, people. Shit, sprint right._

 _RUN._

"-is Lucille. And she. Is. Awesome-"

 _I know that voice…_

"Hey, boss," called the man dragging her to a shadowed figure among the cacophony she'd avoided. "We got ourselves a runner, not a good one 'cause she got herself caught anyways."

Then she was tossed before the group and pain radiated throughout her entirety as she crashed to the asphalt. Lu curled inwards, knees to her chest, Rick on his knees in front of her. Abraham, Eugene, Glenn, Maggie, Carl, Michonne, Rosita, Aaron, _Daryl_.

"Well, what have we _here_?" came a voice that was familiar in a way she couldn't recall with her memories a paint splatter against the canvas of her skull.

"Lulu!"

 _Abraham._

"Lu!"

 _Sasha. Glenn. Maggie_

"Get away from her!"

 _Daryl._

"Leave her alone."

 _Carl. Rick. Michonne._

Their voices cried out in her defense as someone dragged her by her mangled arms to kneel between Maggie and Sasha, a scream shuttered by her clenched teeth. Ragged, damaged skin tight over raw nerves bleeding pain and acid. Her hair, damp with blood and sweat despite the cold, hung before her face; her head weighed more than her neck could support. The world spun around her and her gray eyes clenched shut, blood seeping from the wound at her temple, down her face to drip from her chin, further drenching the fabric of her jeans and when everything _tilted_ she braced her weight as best she could with her only slightly less damaged right arm.

"You're a little late to the party, sweetheart, but as I was telling Rick here. Your merry band of fuckups is about to pay for killing my men. And not just a few, a whole GODDAMN lot of my men." As she opened her eyes a pair of black boots stood mere inches from her knees, the words didn't quite register but _I know that voice._ "But before we begin, you mind tellin' me exactly fuckin' where you got that jacket?"

 _My duster._ The world tilted just a little further on its axis and Lu pitched forward a few degrees until a wooden bat wrapped in barbed wire came into her field of vision and the black boots had a pair of gray jeans tucked into the top of them.

" _Happy birthday, lover."_

 _A white box hidden underneath Star Wars wrapping paper._

" _Aw, doll. You shouldn't have."_

 _She had chuckled. "Figured it might come in handy with the new job."_

" _I fuckin' love it, doll." His deep laugh._

" _Yay sports! Do the things, win the points!"_

"'Cause I knew someone who had a duster fukin' just. Like. That one."

 _Another white box, silver paper._

" _It matches your eyes, doll." A smirk._

" _All that glitters is not gold." A grin in return._

" _Just fuckin' open the thing, I'm dyin' here."_

 _Lifting the paper one corner at a time, just to see if he'd lose his patience._

"All that glitters is not gold," Lu muttered, her head swimming.

"What did you just fuckin' say?!" the man with the voice she knew and unfamiliar gray jeans and black boots demanded.

Somewhere in her head Lu knew she shouldn't close her eyes, something about a concussion being dangerous if she were to fell asleep. But her eyes were heavy and if the world would just stay still for a moment it wouldn't be so _damn_ difficult. A gloved hand touched her chin and lifted her head slowly, puffs of air shifting her hair, the interspersed braids swaying with damp, clumped strands as fingers slid against the blood masking half her face.

Dark hazel eyes met gray and her heart hammered a stuttering beat behind her ribs.

"Lucille."

And she knew that face, those eyes, that whisper of awe against her skin.

" _Lucille! Doll, what are you doing home?"_

 _Dark hazel eyes wide in panic above a lying mouth in the face of the man she'd loved for years._

" _Who is this?" Anger so thick it could choke her._

" _Doll it's not what it looks like."_

 _A trespasser in their bed. Shocked eyes as she slammed the first door shut in her wake, pictures crashing to the floor from where they had hung since he'd put a ring on her finger and sworn to her that she was all he'd ever need._

The bat fell to the ground with a wooden clink and those hands smoothed her hair out of her face, the same eyes wide in panic, searching as Lu's world continued to tilt and spin and hurt. Fingers pressed against her skin, searching, assessing, acid thrummed through her veins on every heartbeat and her jagged nerves went up in flames. Pressure beneath her chest threatened to burst and viscous, wet coughs bubbled up her throat, metallic and hot against her lips.

"Fuck. Shit. Simon, get her in a truck and take her to the fuckin' Sanctuary."

 _I know that voice._

"Boss?" came a voice she recognized. _Abraham's moustache is better and you're a shitbird._

"FUCKING NOW!"

A cacophony of voices rose up in outrage as the world went out like a light but finally stopped spinning.

* * *

"This- this is Lucille, and she. Is. Awesome. All this, all this is just so we can pick out which one of you gets the honor."

Negan grinned, looking over the fucksticks that had been ballsy enough to kill his fucking men. They were going to pay, tit for tat, just as it fucking should be; as many as necessary until the goddamned message got through. A strangled scream sounded out a few hundred yards into the tree line and his gaze snapped over as two of his Saviors followed, searching for the source.

"Oh, I hope you didn't have someone waitin' on me," he jeered, all but bouncing on the tips of his toes. "I surely fuckin' hope you didn't have someone a few hundred yards off just a-fucking-waitin' to take a shot at yours truly. Because that too would be not. Fucking. Cool." The shits in front of him all looked to each other and boy did he have a feeling that scream belonged to someone near and dear to them.

The two men returned mere moments later, dragging a beaten and bloodied woman between them, her features hidden behind a curtain of long, dark hair and a well-worn, darkleather duster. "Hey, Boss. We got ourselves a runner, not a very good one 'cause she get herself caught anyways." Then they tossed the woman before Rick-the-Prick and the whole group of fuck-sticks shifted like they were going to rush to the heap of blood and sweat and leather curled up in front of their ever-so-fearless leader.

"Well, what have we _here_?" he taunted, swinging his beloved Lucille just this side of too close to the woman's head until something familiar caught his eye. The faded outline in the shoulder of the sleeve where a patch should have been, round and taunting, igniting an unholy _fury_ because if this _fucking bitch_ had killed _her_ and taken _her_ jacket...

"Lu!"

"Get away from her!"

"Lulu!"

"Leave her alone!"

 _Now, that_ is _interesting. The fury simmering out and despite the_ years _of disappointment and failure and sheer fucking desperation that had long-since faded into dull resignation; in spite of everything, a flicker of mad hope bloomed._

Negan gave a sharp nod to one of the men who had dragged her from the depths of the trees and he hauled her up to kneel next to her fuck-stick friends. She slumped where the Savior left her, swaying until she had to throw out an arm to keep herself from falling over. A steady drip-drip-drop pattered a steady beat into her ruined jeans, her breaths shallow and wet and wheezing; someone had certainly gotten herself into a heap of fuckin' trouble, that was for sure.

"She's in worse shape than you are, sweetheart and hell, do you look shitty," he snickered to the pale, short-haired woman. "You're a little late to the party, sweetheart, but as I was telling Rick here. Your merry band of fuckups is about to pay for killing my men." He only knew of one person who had ever worn braids like that throughout her hair; someone who had the same dark, thick hair that curled and frizzed at the first sign of humidity. "And not just a few, a whole GODDAMN lot of my men." He walked right up to her, the tips of his boots nearly right against her kneecaps as viscous black-red continued to run from her face to her faded jeans at a steady pace.

"But before we begin, you mind tellin' me exactly fuckin' where you got that jacket?"

Sure as shit the woman was in bad fucking shape and she fell forward a few inches, dark hair swaying in front of her face, hiding her further from his view. So he squatted down in front of her a bit, bracing his weight against his Lucille.

"'Cause I knew someone who had a duster fukin' just. Like. That one."

"-glitters is not gold," the woman murmured and he _knew_ that smoky, cigar-room voice.

"What did you just fuckin' say?!" he demanded. His heart jackhammered in his chest at the possibility, the 'please, please, please,' the years of 'don't be dead,' and prayers to a higher power that he'd never believed in for just five more minutes with _her_..

Negan brought his gloved hand to her chin beneath her hair and lifted gently, his breaths shifting the braids and bloody, damp strands as his lungs struggled to inhale. His glove slid against her skin and bad blood ran a slow stream down his covered fingers until he finally saw her. Through the mask of red on her face he knew that smattering of freckles across her nose, he knew that mouth that had teased him with the barest hint of a smile, he knew those eyes. His heart shuddered to a stop then jumped up into his throat, suffocating every word he'd ever promised to say, every apology he'd sworn to make if only to _touch_ her again, until all he could manage was her name.

"Lucille."

Negan's heart squeezed as the bat she'd gifted him, the one he'd named for _her,_ fell to the ground at his feet, forgotten. He brought both hands to _Lucille's_ face, the face he'd dreamed of since she slammed their bedroom door and the world burned in her wake. Smoothing her hair back, through the blood and the torn gash at her temple, he _needed_ to see her. Then he felt her throat contract, saw her chest heave as she coughed and bad blood slipped from between her lips on a gasp. He heard the rattle in her breath and squeezed her tighter as pure, blind panic wrapped icy fingers around the heart he was still trying to swallow back into its proper place.

"Fuck. Shit. Simon, get her in a truck and take her to the fuckin' Sanctuary," Negan ordered as Lucille lost her ability to hold her own, miniscule weight.

"Boss?" his right hand asked, confusion coloring his voice.

"FUCKIN' NOW!"

And as Simon came forward to retrieve her, damn it all if Rick and his fucking groupies didn't have something to say about that.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a song Lucille had written, years before the world had burned, during a foray into writing more than just guitar riffs and rhythms and melodies. Despite the days she spent working out every piece to several songs, Negan never once regretted having pushed her into doing it because she had always been the best at everything she did. As he watched the tail lights of Simon's truck disappear around a curve, Lucille's blood seeping into the pits and grooves of the wood grip, the memory of her putting together a single line punched him in the chest like a sledgehammer.

 _She was on another writing bender, drunk on some obscure Irish whiskey because "I have to be in that moment if it's going to sound right" and the spare room was a mass of fury and despair. He hated what writing did to her, secreting her away for days on end into the space they'd fashioned into a recording studio that he was "forbidden" from entering while she was working on pain of death. His Lucille had a past and even though getting into those moments tore her thin veil of civility away and turned her into some kind of wild thing, that past made her a very singular musician. Not to mention coming off a writing high made for some top-shelf, dialed up to eleven, sex._

 _He stepped through their front door expecting to be met with more guitar riffs streaming through the tube amp she'd rebuilt, but the house was quiet again. A grin tugged at his face as he dropped his duffle by the door and shrugged off his coat. On silent feet he snuck down the hall, stepping around the weak spots in the hardwood that would give him away if she was listening for him. But he reached the door and she didn't call out to welcome him home or make sure he wasn't sneaking about, he was in the clear._

 _Negan opened the solid wood door just a crack, just enough to peek inside, and there she was. His Lucille sat on the old barstool she'd salvaged, bent over the silver PRS and humming as her fingers plucked and pressed at the strings. Her braids had long since come undone, dark hair draped around her like dark lace, the ink in her skin undulating with her motions. Seeing her like this was always a punch to the gut, she made him want to kill in her name, avenge her and torture them in the most brutal, soulless ways possible. But beneath the twining of the strings he heard her singing._

" _...to you,_

 _And my heart still beats your name."_

Negan swung the bat, back and forth to the staggered beat of his own heart and with each swing heard "Lucille, Lucille, Lucille" just like that song. He turned it in circles as his Saviors pulled Rick-the-Prick's merry band of fucksticks back into place after their little outburst. The Asian kid screaming as Dwight forced him away from the pale, short-haired broad, but ol' Dwighty boy had the redneck's crossbow aimed right for the kid's chest, and goddamn that was some sob-worthy poetry right there.

"Nope." A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth as he centered himself; got back into the game after _that_ fuckin' shock. "Nope, get him back in line."

"No," the kid grunted once Dwight had him back on his knees, then he began to cry in heaving sobs, reaching for the woman who, honestly, looked like she might just turn any fuckin' second. "No. No. Don't. Don't."

Negan chuckled despite himself; that might have once been him a few, long years ago. Not anymore. "All right, listen. Don't any of you do that again," he swung Lucille back round and round, strutting on the stage laid out just for him. "I will shut that shit down, no exceptions. First one's free. It's an emotional moment, I get it."

And there was Rick-the-Prick, with that fuckin' lost look just a-painted on his fucking face. "Sucks, don't it?" he taunted, standing right in the face of the "leader" of Alexandria. "The moment you realize you don't know shit. Because damn, Rick, seems you had something _else_ that belonged to me. But that's okay, we'll just fuckin' call that score settled." He chuckled to himself, "After all, I wouldn't have found her without you."

"Lu doesn't belong to you!" came a voice from right on down the line.

One of the Savior's handguns, a 1911 at first glance, sat on the dirt in front of the one-eyed teenager wearing Smokie's hat, so he sidled right on up. "You got one of our guns," he jibed, pointing Lucille's business end right in the kid's face. "Whoa. Yeah. You got a _lot_ of our guns."

He squatted down to get right up in the kid's face, right in his space because not even the _air_ would belong to these people when he was done. "But that's where you're fuckin' wrong, kid. You see, Lucille's be-fuckin'-longed to me for _years_ , but that's a story for another day. You know, if you live that fuckin' long" Negan's smirk dropped from his face as the half-badass glare shot at him from underneath the brim of that stupid fuckin' hat. "Shit, kid, lighten up. At least cry a little."

 _Back to business,_ he reminded himself swinging Lucille as he stood straight once more. From the corner of his vision there was some stink eye coming from Rick. "This is your kid, right?" He swaggered back with a laugh, "This is definitely your kid."

"Just stop this!" the shit-stain demanded with a growl, drenched in a layer of terrified sweat despite the late-night chill.

"Hey! Do not make me kill the little future serial killer. Don't make it easy on me." Because, damn, that kid was definitely going to fuck some shit up when his balls finally dropped. "I gotta pick somebody. Everybody's at the table fuckin' waiting for me to order."

Negan whistled the two-toned tune, swinging Lucille as he swaggered back tand forth o the ever-present beat of "Lucille, Lucille, Lucille" before his audience. _Who to fuckin' pick._

"I simply cannot decide," he confided admittedly, turning away for a moment to scratch at the back of his head with a chuckle. "I got an idea."

 _Lucille, give me strength,_ and the beat of her name in his chest continued on because she'd _live_ , he'd found her and she was his again.

"Eenie... meenie... miney... mo... catch... a tiger... by... his toe. If... he hollers... let him go. My mother... told me... to pick the very best one... and you... are... it."

Oh, Big Red, wasn't _that_ a surprise. Negan grinned around the sneer that threatened at the corner of his nose, bearing his teeth at the son-of-a-bitch that had called _her_ "Lulu." "Anybody moves, anybody says anything, cut the boy's other eye out and feed it to his father and then we'll start. You can breathe, you can blink, you can cry. Hell, you're all gonna be doing that."

The first swing connected and the force of it ran up Lucille's length and into his shoulders. Damn if he didn't just a-fucking-dore that feeling, "Ho! Ho! Look at that. Taking it like a champ!"

* * *

Everything around her shook, rumbled over a cracked foundation until she, too, was splitting at barely-mended seams. Lu's eyes slit open and a bare glimpse revealed hollowed out buildings and cars, shadows that slithered and shone like pitch. She was in a vehicle, the window forcing undulating vibrations through her pounding head.

"H…how-?"

"You're awake!" came a familiar voice.

 _Shitbird_ , her memories supplied, the one who was unanimously out-stached by Abraham, _ten out of ten barbers agree_. She tried to turn her head, get a better look. Find a route for escape because there was no way in hell this situation could lead to anything good.

"Don't move, sweetheart, don't fall asleep."

Everything was heavy, pressure against her head and her heart threatening to crush the life out of her. The acid in her veins _burned_ and her senses began to fail.

"No, no, no! Sweetheart!" came Shitbird's frantic voice and the vehicle swerved, tires squealing as he reached for her. "Don't you _dare_ close your eyes."

 _Too Late._

* * *

" _Hey, doll, don't close your eyes yet."_ His _voice._

 _A too-firm mattress. Starched white sheets. Metal rails to keep her from falling out._

" _Hey there, Lover. You came."_

 _She was bone-deep tired; the doctors had forced poison through her veins for_ hours.

" _Of course, I came, doll. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."_

 _His team, the band. They'd been keeping him busy, distracted, away from the hospital just like she'd asked. She hadn't wanted to watch him waste away alongside her._

" _I didn't want you to see me like this."_

 _Breathing was becoming more and more difficult, even with the "oxygen on tap" being funneled into her lungs._

 _A fingertip trailed down her face lighter than a feather; forehead, bridge of her nose, down to her mouth to tug gently on her bottom lip._

" _You're still my gorgeous girl."_

 _Her hand at the side of his face, fingers threading into the strands of his hair._

" _My silver fox lover, such pretty lies you tell me." A smile that had always stolen his heart._

" _Lucille." A kiss to the corner of her mouth, lingering like the memory of their first._

" _I thought you'd be out with your team." Breath stuttering through tired lungs and a ribcage that threatened to collapse. "Running around, doing drills or something."_

 _A deep, bass laugh. His fingers interlaced with hers._

" _That's basketball, doll. I'm coaching football, remember?"_

 _Warm lips against her knuckles. Stubble scratched over skin stretched too tight over crackled glass-fragile bone just the way she had always adored._

" _Sports, ew." Nose crinkled, tears at the corner of her eyes, smiling hurt so much._

" _I know, doll. I know." That smile, the one just for her but it didn't reach his eyes, it hadn't for a month._

A fingertip trailed down her face lighter than a feather; forehead, bridge of her nose, down to her mouth to tug gently on her bottom lip.

" _The doc say when we could bust you outta here, doll?"_

 _Her eyelids fluttered, weighed down by lead. Fatigue so overwhelming she was dreaming already._

" _Not yet, Lover. Not yet."_

" _Come on, doll-."_

"-Show me those eyes."

Sunlight cast a bright band across her face and her eyelids fluttered.

"There she is," came _his_ voice from a blind spot just beside her.

A dull throb shot up her spine and into her skull as her eyes slid over to see the black leather jacket, her head full of raw cotton and razor wire. There was a tug at her temple and she winced as she tentatively touched her fingertips to the wound sewn closed.

"You've sure been through the ringer, doll."

" _Multiple gunshot wounds-"_

" _-beginnings of severe infection-"_

" _-critical blood loss-"_

" _I don't give a shiny goddamned shit, doc. Fuckin' save her or I swear on her head I'm going to bash yours right the fuck open!"_

 _Blades digging beneath her skin, burrowing for slugs of twisted metal entrenched in flesh._

"Rick-the-Prick and his merry gang of fuckwits sure rung your bell, doll, not taking care of you the way they should have. Shot up, stabbed, you've got miles more scars than I fuckin' remember. But you're still my gorgeous girl."

His fingers threaded through her hair, smoothing back the fly-aways, tilting her face up toward his enough for deep, dark hazel to capture steel gray. Salt and pepper stubble on a face that had lost all the joy she remembered from _before_ ; eyes harder than they should have been above a smile she definitely should not have missed. The man before her was not the man she had left with the trespasser in their bed when the world fell apart.

"Negan."

That smile fell from his face like a brick off a cliff and a thrill shot through her at denying him an expectation, at barbing him even if only a little. After the months he'd spent betraying her, she _owed_ him retribution and betrayal in kind.

" _There's been a car in your driveway every night for the past three months, Lu." Jack was worried. Jack, her drummer, who had more charisma than sense and never stopped smiling even when the band was flat broke living in her truck, was worried._

 _Trapped in a room so sanitary even comforts from home, even her guitar, lost appeal. Poison coursing through her veins at the order of people in white coats with bullshit "practice-science" degrees. All she wanted was for him to be happy, even if that meant keeping him away from the room she'd spent the last four months wasting away in. She'd either get better or die, but he'd kill himself worrying and she'd be damned before she let that happen._

" _I asked his co-workers to keep him distracted, it's probably just one of the guys, maybe even a few of them, keeping him busy and away from here."_

 _Jack shook his head. "Lucille…" But he'd watched out for her since they'd started the band, just the two of them, years ago, before she'd even heard her Lover's name much less married him._

" _I just don't want you to be hurt, honey."_

 _The same car Jack had described had been in her driveway after she couldn't get ahold of her lover, when the band had brought her home on the day she'd_ finally _been released from the hospital. The night she'd left him with another woman in their bed._

"Gotta admit, doll, that was _not_ the greeting I had hoped for." He pulled his hand away from her hair, hard, dark hazel eyes assessing her as her senses returned. That same hand threaded through his own tussled hair, only to run over his face, smoothing down his frayed edges.

A sneer pulled at her mouth as she pushed herself to sit up on the bed. _Too-firm mattress, starched white sheets, metal rails to keep her from falling out._ Her hair swayed, newly woven braids falling heavy against her back to hang down to her hips and over her shoulders. She should have cut it; long hair was ridiculous. "It's the only one you deserve."

"You have _no idea_ how long I searched for you, Lucille. None!" He pushed himself out of the hard-plastic chair beside the medical bed, the metal feet squealing against the linoleum floor like nails on the chalkboard inside her brain. "You slammed that door, the world fell down, and you weren't _anywhere_!"

The man who had been her husband, her _Lover_ , walked furious, anxious circles in what was likely the entirety of the infirmary where he had stolen her off to. "I called everyone, your band, the studio, the producer, _you_. I fuckin' called a million goddamn times and no one would FUCKIN' ANSWER ME."

"That's just like you, Negan: pissed off that I was gone, not a thought given that you betrayed me in our home, in our god damn bed." Lu pushed her legs over the side of the bed, grimacing at the lightning quick pain rushing through her nerves. "Didn't even have the common fucking decency to fuck your slag in a hotel room...not you." She glared at him as he stopped his pacing, looking at her like he wanted to help, to reach out and touch her just one more time, but somewhere in there he had to have known that she'd cut off his hand before she let him help her. It didn't stop him from staring at her legs, the bandages and gauze wrapped around her thigh, dozens of scars from self-stitched gashes and gunshot wounds.

"How'd you justify it to yourself, Negan?" she demanded, fury beyond measure finally given an outlet. "Did you even tell her that I was in the hospital, that I had _cancer_? Or did you figure I was as good as dead anyway so what fucking difference would it make?"

Negan at least had the decency to look ashamed, glancing away from her and at the floor, and she knew, she fucking _knew_ that's exactly what he'd done. He'd watched her fall apart that night after the concert and then waste away for the first month; he'd seen that she wasn't immediately getting better, heard all the doctor's nay-saying and generally less than optimistic predictions, and he'd just fucking given up on her. Damn her if that didn't make her blood boil over.

"You son of a bitch," Lu glowered at him, forcing her body off another medical bed, the kind of which she'd long since learned to hate more than life itself. "You fucking buried me, I was dead to you before my heart even stopped fucking beating, and you goddamned moved the fuck on!"

"You _knew_ what I was when you married me, Lucille- "

"And you swore that I was _IT_ for you! You swore to ME that I was the be all and end all of your fucking sexual deviancies!"

In an instant he stood before her, hands gripping her arms like iron bands, "I'm sorry, Lucille. Is that what you want me to say? That I'm sorry? Because fuck, I'm so fucking sorry." Negan's face was a scant inch from her own, his unsteady breaths hot against her skin and he was _finally_ falling apart like she was something he fucking cared about again. "If I could take it all back I fuckin' would. I would burn the world to ashes if that's what it took."

"You burned _my_ world down," she all but screamed, rage simmering at the most honest expression she'd seen on his face in _years_. "You ruined _everything_ with your fucking dalliance. I had to call the band to bring me home because you couldn't be assed to answer your goddamned phone."

Lu flung his hands off her arms and pushed him with every iota of strength she could muster. "Jack knew, he saw that car in our driveway and told me you were back to your old tricks but I... But I couldn't believe that after everything, _everything_ we'd fucking been through you would betray me while I was still alive."

The door burst open and through it came two of the "saviors" as Rick had called them, one of which was the Shitbird who's mustache didn't hold a candle to Abraham's. They glanced back and forth between herself and Negan, eyes lingering on her dressed only in a gray camisole and her blue underwear, skin and scars and ink on full fucking display. The other a gangly blond with an enormous burn scar over half his face, and was that _Daryl's_ vest he was wearing?

 _Fucking wafflestain,_ Lu decided, lip curling in disgust and she was definitely going to kill him first.

"Everything okay in here, Boss?" Shitbird asked even though his eyes were locked onto her.

In that instant Negan's entire posture changed, and he immediately adopted a leaning swagger like he was the last cowboy in the world. "Now Si, I just fuckin' _know_ you're not staring at my abso-fuckin'-lutely _gorgeous_ girl when she's half-dressed. Be a goddamn gentleman and wait for me outside, would ya'?"

Shitbird hazzard a glance at Lu once more before nodding at Negan then he and Wafflestain departed the room just as quickly. She cocked an eyebrow at the man a mere few feet from her.

"'Boss?' Really? You?" she sneered and her abdomen went up in flames like a brushfire.

"Oh yes indeedy, doll. I am king of the fucking castle, lord of everything you see," he crowed, teeth bared in what could hardly be called a smile.

An incredulous expression settled on her face as she shifted her weight onto her good leg. "Well good for you, king dick. Where's my shit, I'm getting dressed and leaving; I've had enough."

Damn that man, he cocked an eyebrow right back at her. "Your _shit_ , gorgeous, is in my rooms. To in-fuckin'-clude your boots, what's left of your pants, and the duster. Weapons are in my armory" He took slow, steady steps toward her, as though she were some wild animal stuck in a hunter's trap and needed his fucking help. "And just where would you go, gorgeous? Back to Rick-the-Prick and his-"

"Merry bunch of fucksticks, yes, I heard you the first time."

Negan's expression softened once he was a breath from her, bringing a tentative hand to her hair and twining a long, braided length through his fingers. "Exactly, baby. They weren't fucking taking care of you; hell, you were fuckin' damn near dead when my guys pulled you out of the goddamn woods."

"I'm not wholly convinced it wasn't your people who shot up my fucking truck to begin with, _Negan_. I'm relatively certain, in fact, that it was. So, if _anyone_ is responsible for my _latest_ brush with death, it's _you_." There was that fury, she knew better than to trust his damn, lying eyes. "I don't want or need anyone to take care of me, I'm fine on my own. Now give me. My. Shit."

"What if I want you to just stay here a while, doll? What if I say 'no'?" Damn his soft eyes, the smell of him that clung to her senses, how _dare_ he look at her like she was the one who left him to die alone.

Lu's face contorted with rage and another snarl pulled at the corner of her nose, "I swear to Christ, Negan-"

"Is it so fuckin' impossible to think that I really just fuckin' want you here? Shit, baby, I goddamn _missed_ you; even kept that fuckin' bat you got me." He was using her rage to distract her, she noted, he'd snuck his fingers to the nape of her neck and was edging forward. Heaven help her…

"Why couldn't you have just missed me before?" and she couldn't fucking _breathe_ he was so close, the flecks of green in his eyes _burning_.

Negan inhaled slowly, settling his forehead against hers as the hand not twisting through the hair at her neck slid up to her hip. He was breathing her in, just like he used to, and her heart fucking _skipped_ in blatant spite of just how outraged she still was at him. "I couldn't fuckin' watch you dying in that bed, doll. Hell, _you_ made sure I didn't, getting' every-fuckin-body to keep me away from that fucking room like that, you sneaky bitch. But you left me alone, took my heart and you were dead set on dying without me."

"So, you went and fell into the first soccer mom you found? Because you couldn't just _wait_ for me to finally kick the bucket?" Her eyes closed at his sharp inhale. "I gave you _everything_ and you couldn't just wait for me."

"I know, doll. You always fuckin' hated sports, but damn if you weren't at every, single, goddamned game. I know how much time you gave up, how many things you sacrificed because of me. I don't have any more excuses, Lucille. I'm fuckin'…I fucked up. I'm fucked up. And I'm so goddamn sorry, sweetheart."

The sting of tears burned in Lu's eyes and she turned away from him, pulling from his hands and the heat of an embrace that threatened to steal her fury. She'd sworn years ago that she wouldn't shed another tear for him, for what they'd had together, she couldn't make a liar out of herself now.

"Every fuckin' game and you showed up with that bat every time," he chuckled. "Like you were just _achin'_ to press my goddamn buttons. And, doll, do you _ever_ press my damn buttons."

Really, he was fucking flirting with her and laying down innuendos like the last years didn't fucking _burn_ her?

"You want me to press a button, Negan? Well here's one for you: if you keep me here, if you don't give me my shit and let me leave, I'm going to burn to the fucking _ground_ everything you care about."

He _finally_ stepped away from her, stopped pursuing her around the slab that could hardly be called a bed, and she _ached_ at the loss. "You should get back in that bed, doc says you've still got a bit of healing up to do. I'll be back for you tomorrow." His hands on her hips as he lifted her up and onto the too-firm mattress and goddamn _tucked her in_ , before heading to the door and picking up that _fucking bat_.

Just as she was about to heave a sigh of relief, he hesitated, turning back to her with one hand on the door. "Just promise me one thing, okay sweetheart. Promise you'll let me burn with you."

Then he was gone and the first sob wreaked havoc through her.

* * *

Negan knew she would be furious with him, knew she probably wouldn't ever fuckin' forgive him for that fuckup of goddamn _epic_ proportions. But damn him if he didn't fuckin' care how she felt about it, he'd spend the rest of his life making it up to her; she was _alive_ and _here_ and he was never going to let her leave. Hell, she'd gone out of her way to rile him up before, if the world hadn't gone to shit he'd never have heard the end of her getting him a goddamn _baseball_ bat and taking it to the _football_ games. He was going to rile her up right back.

" _Hey, uh, why's your girl got a bat with her?"_

 _It was the first home game after his birthday, his first season as head coach, and his Lucille was in the stands cheering for him just like she'd promised._

" _Fuckin' what now?" cause his assistant coach was a goddamn idiot and surely to Christ his wife knew better._

" _Lucy, man. She's got a goddamn_ baseball _bat with her, dude."_

 _He'd turned about so fuckin' quick anyone else would have gotten whiplash, searching for her in the crowd, hoping to hell she hadn't heard that dumb motherfucker call her by_ that _name. Once he'd laid eyes on her, sure enough, she had that goddamn bat she'd gotten him for his birthday and a smile at the corner of her mouth. He'd smirked right at her and shook his head until that secret smile of hers lit up on her whole face, those grey eyes fuckin_ shining _just for him._

" _She does know this is_ football _right? I mean, I know Lucy ain't stupid, but…damnit man."_

 _He'd turned back 'round to his asshole assistant, "Fuckin' one, she's doin' it to fuckin' rile me up, and two, she'd knock you the fuck out if you ever called her 'Lucy' to her goddamn face. Her name's 'Lucille' so you best duck your head and get in the game or I'll beat you ass instead."_

 _Negan had been hard for her the entire night just like she'd wanted. Then he'd made her pay for it that night after the game, and every game after._

"Everything okay in there, boss?" Simon asked with a smirk.

Negan grinned, "Gorgeous in there's gonna be fuckin' staying for the long haul and she sure as _shit_ ain't gonna be happy about it. Get one of the men to watch that door, if I know my girl, and I sure as hell _know my girl_ , she's got something up her sleeve."

He'd keep Lucille in in the safety of the Sanctuary by whatever means necessary, lock her in one of the cells if that's what it took to make sure she didn't fuckin' go anywhere. But no, that wouldn't work, either, not with that redneck down there. And damn did Daryl have a pair, slugging him right in the jaw for "kidnapping" Lucille then demanding he "bring her back." But once that Asian kid was stew he knew Rick and his fuckstick friends certainly got the goddamn picture. Which brought him to his next point…what had happened to Lucille in that truck.

As he and Simon made their way through the Sanctuary his eyes narrowed. "Who was scouting the roads out toward Alexandria a couple nights ago? 'Cause I'd swear I said recon _only_ until we could get our little meet-and-greet sorted with those pricks."

"Few new guys. Why, what's up?"

Negan's lip curled and cold, black anger shot hard through him, "I got a need to know who fuckin' shot up a truck that night."

Simon halted suddenly, "A truck, boss?"

"Truck headed to Alexandria the night before we rounded up Rick-the-Prick and his fuckin' asshole friends." Negan kept walking, purpose in every stride and the bat, _Lucille, Lucille, Lucille,_ caught in a white-knuckle grip. "She was in it."


	3. Chapter 3

"I hear you were quite the musician before the world fell," Doctor Carson offered, an attempt at small-talk as he re-bandaged the bullet wound in her thigh.

Pretense it was then. When he'd entered the stark infirmary to find her awake Lu could _see_ the excitement in his eyes. "I played a few stages in my time," she shrugged, trying to determine just how much he'd "heard" about her having been a musician before the world fell.

The aged, balding man almost looked offended but quickly covered the expression, a professional at keeping his thoughts from his face; though whether that was due to just being a doctor or a manipulative shit was still up for debate. She'd have to be very careful around him, she noted, him and everyone else here in…wherever the hell she fucking was. This wasn't her territory and none of them could be trusted as far as she was concerned.

"Come now, don't be modest," he insisted with careful hands gently maneuvering the gauze around her thigh. "I recognized you as soon as Simon carried you in here, bleeding out and half dead. Metal wasn't even entirely to my taste, but Death and Taxes wasn't a small-time band by half."

He knew exactly who she was to the world from before, he hadn't fucking _heard_ anything, and he was trying to stroke her goddamn ego. Lu would have laughed if it wasn't just so fucking _sad_. They were in the midst of Romero's burning fucking apocalypse and here was a _doctor_ playing fanboy to her former rockstar. But she managed to coax a grin to the corner of her mouth; she'd have to play along for a while if she wanted to get the hell out of here. To hell with Negan and his goddamn apologies.

"Bet you were a big-time hair-band rocker in the 70's and 80's, doc."

The balding man blushed at the tips of his ears as he tied together the ends of the gauze. "British rock, to be accurate. Lift your shirt please," he instructed, pressing cold, latex covered fingertips to the bullet wound that pierced her side.

"Queen, Iron Maiden, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles" Lu offered, grimacing as pain ran quick-shot beneath her skin, spiderwebbing all along her nerve endings.

"Once upon a time I had hair and Brian May was who I wanted to _be_ ," he confided with a light laugh, fingertips still running ram shod around the wound. "How bad is that?"

"Maybe a seven," she lied as he peeled back the medical tape to remove the bandage. _Eleven, motherfucker, mine goes up to eleven._ To Lu's eyes her side looked rather like ground beef, torn and gnarled and irritated. "The Red Special was an _amazing_ guitar for its day," she affirmed, shaking off the shock of seeing her side gaping, just short of gushing and irritated.

He gave her a surprised glance before returning his attention to the redness of what was very likely infection around the through and through _hole_ in her flesh. "You know, you're very lucky that bullet didn't hit anything vital on its way through here. This is a bad portion of the abdomen to be shot…"

Lu snorted, "I didn't exactly _ask_ to be shot, doc. I didn't even know about these guys until…well…the night they dragged me into this." She knew Carson likely didn't care, it wasn't his job to care, his job was just to keep her alive for that insurmountable _asshole_. _More Wolves or Claimers but worse than the both of them combined._ So she set that anger aside, better to save it for someone who _deserved_ it. "I _was_ a guitarist, doc; once I'd seen Highlander I was hooked on Queen. 'Who Wants to Live Forever' was one of my all-time favorites for years."

"Highlander?" the man stood to grab a syringe and what she could only assume was penicillin from an equipment cabinet.

"1986 cult fantasy movie, Chris Lambert and Sean Connery?" At the blank look he gave her as he injected her infected wound, she raised one arm aloft, "You know, 'There can be only one!'"

"I know the song but I'm unfamiliar with the film." He turned back to the supply cabinet and as he retrieved what Lu could barely see to be more bandages she knew if he was comfortable enough to turn his back to her then he didn't consider her to be a threat. He'd turned completely away from her and hadn't bothered making sure she wasn't making moves to sneak up on him and why not, who stabbed someone when they'd reminisced about classic rock bands? Of course he wouldn't, no one stabbed someone after reminiscing about Freddie Mercury and Brian May...although... _Momma, just killed a man._ She might be able to use that to her advantage…

"I remember that Bohemian Rhapsody was part of that film with Michael Myers and Dana Carvey, although Ballroom Blitz certainly played a larger part." Carson turned with a genuinely giddy smile, hands full of supplies and good intentions as he inspected the tunnel shot through her side once more.

"Go figure," she laughed tightly, but the pain from tensing her abdomen cutting her short. "He knows Wayne's World but not Highlander. That movie was every guy's wet dream for over half a dozen awesome songs: Time Machine, Hot and Bothered, Feed My Frankenstein…"

"Now let's not forget Foxy Lady," he offered with a smile, pushing a vial of penicillin into the skin around the wound before taping a bandage to her side with care.

A sly grin settled on Lu's face. "Doc, are you _flirting_ with me?" she prodded saucily, hoping to absolutely shatter his calm façade, to see just _what_ his intentions were exactly.

"Oh, n-no, I would never…I meant-" Carson began stuttering out hastily, backing away quickly with his hands up, that professional mask failing entirely in light of the pure, unadulterated panic running through him.

 _How interesting..._

"The Hendrix song, I know," she assuaged him, laughing as she pushed herself up to sit instead of continuing to lie on the too-firm mattress. "I'm just giving you a hard time, doc, I promise. No need to jump out of your skin just yet."

The older man said nothing for a moment before shaking his head, trying to clear the panic from his system and force a smile, but he was clearly rattled. Such an over-the-top reaction for something so small, just what in the fresh, shining hell was going on here?

"My apologies, Negan just…he's rather overbearing with such things concerning people whom belong to him," he attempted to explain, gathering another item from the supply cabinet.

When he turned back to her a cold chill shot through her chest. Well shit, he was going to draw her blood or inject her with a mind-numbing painkiller and she needed her wits for what came next. Lu had to think fast, trying to keep her expression calm as he approached her with a loaded syringe. "I don't _belong_ to _Negan_ ," she insisted firmly, leaving no room for rebuttal.

"Well Negan seemed particularly insistent that you not die when he had you brought here, in spite of the fact you were very nearly dead," Carson recalled for her, tapping on her arm to find a suitable vein. "He's usually only that overbearing when it comes to his wi-" he began to explain as the needle slipped into her skin.

Lu brought the heel of her left palm up into his nose lightning quick, soundly breaking it with an audible crack and sending Carson tumbling backwards into a medical cart with a tray full of surgical steel equipment. Throwing her legs over the side of the bed as he doubled over, clutching the bleeding mess of his face, she stood as quickly as she was able, doing her level best to ignore the fire roiling along her nerves. Striding over to him, she buried her knee into his gut, sending the aged man sprawling to the ground but not before she landed a solid hit to his temple.

"Doc?" came a masculine voice from just outside the closed door. "Everything okay in there?"

It was one of Negan's lackeys; he'd had someone watch the door because he _knew_ she'd try to collect her things and escape. That son of a bitch, he was trying to fucking _cage_ her. If that shitsack on the other side of the door caught her before she could take him out, he would _absolutely_ fucking tattle to Negan and that motherfucker would put her in a goddamned _box_. From their exchange earlier, she knew he'd never leave her alone again, even if it meant locking her in a closet. She had to move quick if she was going to get the drop on the shitsack outside the door.

"Doc, if you don't answer I'm gonna have to come in there and I don't give a fuck about your doctor-patient what-the-fuck-ever."

Door opens to the right.

Crouch behind the steel door, Carson's on the other side of the thing not suitable to be called a bed.

He'd have to come in the room in order to actually _see_ Carson where she'd left him bleeding from the face and unconscious on the floor.

If he didn't have any kind of training, he hopefully wouldn't check behind the door for her.

So Lu grabbed the tray from the cart and crouched against the wall, waiting for the windowless door to open. _Asshole_ had left her with only her tank and underwear, banking on the fact she might not try anything without proper clothes; things from here on could get a little tricky… Then the door swung open, a shadow and footsteps announced the shitsack that'd been standing just outside. Smaller than she'd expected, certainly not a bad thing.

"Doc?" he called stepping further into the room and the door swung closed behind him.

Lu soundlessly rushed up behind him on bare feet, tray raised high, and she brought it down with every ounce of strength she could muster. Low and behold the man fell like…well like a sack of shit, collapsing bonelessly to the cold linoleum floor. No training to speak of, obviously, so he was just some guy that might have been good with a gun and Negan, ever the fucking coach, had voted him onto his team. She rolled him over, taking stock of both clothes and weapons; the boots would certainly be too big, but big boots were better than no boots. With nimble fingers she unlaced the boots, pulling them from his feet before stripping him of his pants, jacket, knife and handgun.

Lu cast cautious glances at the door as she dressed quickly, the hallway was quiet but beyond that she had no idea of where or what this place was. Once her boots were strapped on, she dragged the shitsack towards the duplicitous doctor, grimacing at the burning pull in her side, then headed for the door. She pulled it open a crack, looking and listening for anyone who might be wandering through the poorly-lit, industrial gray hallway. Not finding any signs of life, she slid out of the infirmary and along the wall to her left, the stolen handgun at the ready as she cleared every corner for another guard or sentries, but there was no one

Before long she reached a set of double doors flanked with windows that allowed the natural sunlight to spill in and break up the sickly fluorescent glow of the lights above. Even without peeking she could tell there were a decent amount of people out there, they were making a goodly amount of noise. So that meant this place was some kind of walled-off compound if they weren't concerned about the amount of noise drawing the dead to them. Wasn't that just ducky. She adjusted her hair beneath her shirt and pulled the hood of her stolen jacket up over her head, hunched her shoulders a bit, and pushed the door open slowly.

 _Don't run,_ Lu remembered from her time with the Marines she'd survived with for the first months. _Don't run and don't sneak. If you're going to be some place you're not supposed to be and you don't want to get caught you gotta look like you belong there. Don't walk with a purpose, you'll draw attention to yourself, just walk like you're headed to chow and it's the last meal of the day and you're starving but tired._

So Lu walked, a slow-ish kind of drawl of the weary and tired, taking note of her surroundings. Chain link fence, industrial manufacturing-type buildings on the other side, asphalt and parking spaces. People every-fucking-where, guard towers, _the dead_ tied up to the fence and impaled on great damn stakes just outside it like guard dogs. _People_ securing the dead to the fence with chains. What the fuck kind of place had Negan brought her to?

A pronounced limp cut into her stride and her side was on fire once she reached the larger building, to add to her current collection of maladies a sharp pain cut through her head and she could feel a stream of wetness begin to slide down her back. Lu pulled the heavy door open, setting the veritable cornucopia of aches and pains aside to make her way inside to be met with the chatter of _dozens_ of people. The room, some kind of production floor from the look of it, was full of people and tables, steal-able necessities and food. All of it laid out below a metal walkway that ran around and over the floor below; hopefully his nibs wouldn't have anyone out and about looking for her just yet, but she'd have to be quick all the same.

In her head "You gotta look like you belong" warred with long-ingrained animal instinct to slink out of the open and hide, pick off those in her way then get somewhere a safe distance from here. But she made her way further into the fray of people, keeping a wary eye out for anyone that might recognize her: Shitbird, Wafflestain, or that bastard, son of a bitch. The tables had various things laid out on them she noted, making her way through a few of them, people standing at them most likely selling the items. Most of it was junk, remnants from the world before for those trapped in the past that would be little more than fodder for the wild beyond the boundaries of their fence.

"You have any boots?" Lu asked the lady just across a table laden with shoes. "Found these a while back 'cause mine wore down but they're big and blisters will be abundant if I don't find any that fit."

The grizzled, dirty old woman took barely a glance at her, "What size'r you?"

Lu grinned a bit, "Seven if you have it."

The woman pulled a pair of black boots from beneath the table and set them down atop it with a thud. "That'll be eighty points," she announced, a slight southern drawl coating her speech.

"Take these in trade?" Lu asked. "Laces are solid, still got great tread, no wear in the soles." She bent down to take took the boots off with a grimace and a gasp around the shock of pain from the stitches tearing. She stood after a steadying breath, bare feet on a far colder concrete floor and set the boots beside the woman's on the table with an answering thud.

The woman pushed a lock of gray hair behind one ear before picking up the boots to inspect them closely. "This's a good pair and a common size among the men. I'll give you my boots and twenty points fer trade if you'll have it."

The grin grew on Lu's face as she picked up the new-to-her boots, "Nah. I'll just be happy to have a pair that fit right, been wearing those for weeks now. I get my points pretty regular and don't need for much, you keep them."

A strange expression crossed the woman's face and she looked ready to object or cry foul but a commotion from across the shop floor stole both their attention. A fight of some kind, four men very openly beating the other two to death in the sight of anyone who cared to look. Alarms went off in Lu's head and she quickly pulled her boots on, not bothering to lace them, a chill running down her spine and the hairs at the back of her neck standing on end.

"What's goin' on there?" she asked the woman, tilting her chin at the commotion as she adjusted the hood over her head, scanning the walkway again for faces.

"That's Savior business, girl, best you not get involved," she answered, very quickly diverting her attention back to the goods on her table.

Lu snorted, "What a bunch of dickweeds."

"Careful, girl, talk like that'll get ya hurt, 'specially if one of 'em hears you say it," the woman warned. "And I'd say you likely can't take much more from the look of ya," nodding to the bandage at her temple and the blood seeping through her grey camisole.

So Lu grimaced and forced a look of acceptance, putting pressure against her side as the woman took stock of trade. "You never know, some people can take a hell of a beating when it's worthwhile."

Then something caught her eye, a shock of blonde hair and a huge burn scar. Well, well, well, if it wasn't the Wafflestain. From the look of things though, he didn't know she was missing from the infirmary in the other building, which meant Carson and Shitsack were still down for the count and, as of yet, undiscovered. But he wasn't watching the fight, at least not anymore if he'd ever had eyes on that beatdown at all. No, he was casting mooneyes up at a brunette woman in a little black dress across the room from him. Now there was certainly something to that; a woman all trussed up and clean in a cocktail dress and heels while everyone else, on the work floor at least, was less than passable.

"And him?" Lu gestured loosely to Wafflestain, "He a 'Savior,' too? Or do those guys not even police their own?"

The old woman sighed and looked back up from her table to Lu. "Look here, girl, because I'm sure you're new to this place. The Saviors are Negan's men, his fighters, and Dwight there, well he made a right mess of things for a while. He and Sherry, that woman ya' seen him lookin' at, they made off with a bunch 'a medicine with another gal. That's why he's got that big 'ol burn. Negan and his Saviors don't take kindly to people makin' a fuss, so you best be mindin' your own, ya' hear?"

Something was off, wrong, nothing about that made sense. If Wafflestain and his Sherry just ran off with a bunch of medicine, why in the holy hell would Negan, the Negan she certainly didn't know now, just let them waltz back in? Burning the guy's face off was just downright cruel, but there had to be something else at play, something she wasn't seeing.

"So he just let them off? Guess he's a nicer guy than I thought," she prodded with a huffed laugh, making as to walk away from the old woman.

"Negan didn't just 'let them off,' girl. He let them back in o'course, but he burned half 'a Dwight's face off with the iron and took Sherry who was married to Dwight as one of his wives."

Shock gave way to fury gave way to rage and Lu's knuckles were bone white with how tightly her fists clenched against her side, her nails digging crescent cuts into her palms. Cold ran through her and honestly, she knew she shouldn't have been surprised, he'd buried her and forsaken every oath he'd made to her when he knew she was alive. What the fuck could she think he'd do when he thought she'd _actually_ been well and truly dead? Had he even _tried_ to find her after she left or had he just been happy to keep the woman he'd invited into _their_ bed and bang on? Of course, he fucking would.

"That bastard son of a whore."

* * *

"Hey, Boss," Simon called to Negan from just down the concrete and cinderblock hallway. "It's all taken care of."

Ah, the two sorry shits who'd shot up Lucille's truck the other night, fuckin' good. "No shit? When'd that go down?" Cause wasn't that something he'd have loved to see. But, no, best not to let on to the unwashed, writhing masses that something was out of place...

The mustached man, his right fuckin' hand and go-to guy, smiled that geeked out, full-faced grin that was all straight, white teeth as he stopped just in front of him. "Ten minutes or so ago; smooth as clockwork, no muss, no fuss."

"Out-fuckin'-standing," he grinned right back, clapping his second in command on the shoulder as he continued on down the monotone hallway. "This is why you're my right-hand man: no complaints, no second guessing me, just re-fuckin'-sults and damn if that doesn't just make my damn day."

They walked on for a moment, past the cells and that stupid fuckin' song that'd drive anyone pure out-of-their-skull crazy before Simon finally asked the question Negan knew had to have been rolling over in his head since that night he'd put the fear of god in Rick-the-Prick. "What's the deal with her, Boss? You never get so unhinged over a woman, certainly not one you just picked outta a lineup like that."

"We were something before all this," he told Simon, content in that moment to say nothing more but then, like it was only a moment ago, the memory of the first time he'd ever seen her bubbled up in his chest and out of his mouth before he could stop the words from slipping out. "She was one of those lost kids, you know? Ran away from home real young and just grew up somewhere else; wild and take-no-shit, a survivor right down to her fucking soul, you know? Had a way with a guitar and words and making people just fuckin' _feel_ shit; she'd wind 'em up, wring 'em out, and swagger off a stage like it wasn't anything."

During that first show, the one she'd played with her ragged band at the bar that was renowned for never letting live bands play. She'd been all fire and fury and passion and everything he'd never known how to put words to. She dug up all his anger and frustration, gave it an outlet until he'd been left feeling raw and out of his mind with just wanting her to _speak_ to him. Lucille had this way of controlling a room, a stage, an arena...it was effortless; she was always master of her stage, no matter how large or small, and when he'd caught her eyes that night he lost himself in her.

"So, what happened?" Simon asked, pulling Negan from his reminiscence.

 _I happened_ , but he wasn't about to tell _anyone_ that. Everything else from before might be dead and gone, but Lucille was _alive_ and to hell with everything else. He was going to make abso-fuckin'-lutely certain she stayed where he could take care of her. The way he should have before. The way Rick-the-Prick and his gang of fucking do-gooders didn't. He wasn't going to lose her again, not now that she was safe in the Sanctuary, now that he had a chance to make it right, to make her see...

"The world fuckin' burned," he growled more to himself than Simon.

Negan knew his right-hand wanted to ask more, he had to just be a-burnin' with curiosity, but he knew well enough to leave it alone; yet another reason why he was more suited for the job than any of these other motherfuckers. No, the rest of them would nag and ask and never shut-the-fuck-up about it so he'd have to make an example of one of them… Yessir-y, Simon was the man for the job, between the two of them nobody would be asking stupid questions about his Lost Girl and just who she was. Not until he was ready for it.

"Well, doc, how's our patient do-" he began as he pushed open the door to the medical ward, then he stopped in his tracks at the sight that greeted him. Or, more accurately, what was _not_ there to greet him.

"Damn her eyes…" he muttered to himself, noting the mess of equipment on the floor and the dent in a metal tray that lie on the gurney.

He walked around the very obviously empty bed and there was the doc and Mike, Carson with a bloodied face and both men with large, dark bruises blooming at their temples. He stepped over the doc and very nearly naked Mike dressed only in his socks, tighty-whities, and black tee. She'd knocked them out; she'd broken doc's face and knocked both of them out. She was _gone_. Which meant…she was going to run again.

"Boss," he heard Simon walk in just a few paces behind, likely trying to give him some space, just himself and Lucille... "Oh, holy shit." Then a few long seconds later, Simon having obviously taken stock of what one small, wounded woman had done, "What do you want us to do?"

 _They'd only just finished their latest tumble through the sheets, his and Lucille's. Gray, just like her eyes, because he wanted every part of his life to match her. She'd laughed, joked, and called him "obsessive" but he loved how that fluid quicksilver had darkened to steel had darkened further to gunmetal when he pressed his lips just_ there _against her skin or ran his tongue along a certain dark line of ink._

 _But the woman in his arms wasn't_ her _, she was in a room too small for the life she'd lived, in a bed that made her positively tiny. Wasting away and she wouldn't let him see her. Made fucking sure he didn't by using_ everyone _against him. She was dying, fading, that wildness trapped like dying fireflies in a jar._

" _Damn," the blonde woman beside him sighed against his chest, sweat beginning to cool on their skin. "Why didn't we ever do this before?"_

 _Because I didn't need you to feel alive. Because you only exist to me right now._

" _Because I was married."_

 _The bedroom door swung open slowly, the_ Lucille _kind of slow; like she did when she thought he was asleep and wanted to crawl into bed and curl up against his side once her writing bender was all worked out of her system. His gaze shot over and there she was._ Alive _. More alive than she'd been since this whole mess with the cancer had started._

" _Lucille! Doll, what are you doing home?"_

 _Quicksilver darkened to gunmetal like a cloud hiding the sun as joy gave way to shock, then finally to anger. There was her wildness._

" _Who is this?" and that cigar-room voice wasn't gasping or exhausted anymore._

" _Doll it's not what it looks like," but he didn't bother to push the body away from him until Lucille had swung around and slammed the door so hard every picture had fallen off the wall and the doorframe splintered._

 _Then he was moving, pulling on his jeans to the sound of her truck firing up and flinging the door open to run after her. But by the time he got to the front door it was already open and she was gone, that old truck gone with her in it, the burned rubber on the driveway and the broken doorframe telling the tale of her having been there at all. What had he done? Shitfuck, shit, fuck, fuck, FUCK!_

" _LUCILLE!"_

" _Who was that?" called out the woman, now dressed from the room he'd violated with her presence._

" _Get out," he raced for his phone. He might still be able to get ahold of her, just call and explain…something; make her just fuckin' listen so she'd come_ back _._

" _Ex-cuse me? Just who do you think you are-" she demanded, grabbing ahold of his bicep._

 _Negan rounded on her, "I said get the fuck out, you dumb cunt."_

 _Then the woman was gone, and he called Lucille, Jack, Matt, Damian, Brian, the studio, the producer a million and one times and no one would answer him._

 _That night the world burned all around him as he drove every place he could think to just searching for her. He looked into every dead face praying it wasn't hers he'd find staring sightlessly back at him._

"Fuckin' _find_ her!" Negan roared at Simon before storming out of the infirmary.

Within minutes every single one of his Saviors were searching high and low for a woman that didn't belong, the one that he'd ordered brought back to the Sanctuary bleeding out, unconscious, delirious, and half dead. But she was fucking alive and she'd escaped medical, clearly strong enough to take out the Doc and a Savior, Mike, who'd been with them for nearly a year. After who knew how long on her own, all that wild that he'd loved about her to begin with had taken over, grown like ivy in her soul; it was choking out the need to belong somewhere, _with_ someone.

Negan prowled through the factory proper until he finally came to the manufacturing floor with the trade tables and camped out point-workers. He looked out over them, the bat, _Lucille, Lucille, Lucille,_ in hand as they knelt in a wave before him, like a king or a god.

" _When you're on that stage, you're not just yourself anymore; when I'm up there I'm not_ just _Lucille. You control them, everything they feel and the energy that comes with those emotions. To them, your audience, you're a god."_

Then just like that, amidst the dozens of people, he spotted the flash of a white bandage and a lone braided strand hanging out from beneath the hood of a grease-covered jacket. As he descended the stairs, each footfall thudding on the steel, his heart jackhammered in his chest, ticking away the seconds until he once again squatted down in front of the woman he'd always be lost in. _Beating her name._ She'd run last time and he'd lost her for years in a flood of death and brutality; she was so _good_ at running. _Lost girl._ But this time, this time he'd found her.

Negan brought a hand to her face again, no glove to bar the feel of her skin against his fingertips, and lifted her chin slowly. "Come on, doll. Show me those eyes."

Cold, gunmetal gray eyes glared up at him from beneath the hood of a stolen jacket and he smirked in light of the absolute rage he knew was boiling just beneath her skin.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't my Lost Girl."


	4. Chapter 4

"I'm not _your_ anything, haven't been for years," Lu declared lowly, glaring up at her former "Lover" around the acid running through her nerves once more, threatening to knock her out.

Then he fucking _smirked_ at her, grabbing her by her right bicep to haul her to her feet, careful even in his cruelty not to injure her further. Dark hazel eyes glimmered with ill-concealed mirth, with open pride as he looked her over, like he'd accomplished something. She supposed he had: he'd had his armed goons block off every possible exit, herding her back into the factory and away from the gates. She'd been seconds away from slitting the lone guard's throat and slipping away with him none the wiser until it was too little too late.

"So, tell me," Negan commanded with that self-satisfied smirk, tilting his chin up at her as though daring her to exaggerate just how close she'd come to escaping the cage he'd thrown her into. "How far did you make it this time? The parking lot? The guard towers?"

Lu's lip curled in disgust, half sneer and half-glare; he thought he'd caught her for good. Like this was all just a simple game of hide-and-seek. _Finder's, keeper's, Sweetheart._ In spite of just how much she hated to admit it, he had her well and truly cornered. Blocked off every possible avenue, nowhere to run…yet. She'd have to be patient, calculated, if she was going to get out of this cage he'd trapped her in.

" _The best laid plans aren't ever rushed. You have to take your time with them, learn every possible in and out forwards, backwards, and sideways. Don't ever jump into something without thinking."_

"This is _nothing_ like last time," because even if he didn't think so, she still had to say it. "And I was at the gate before your dogs even started sniffing about."

That smirk fell from his face like a fucking brick and she knew exactly what fears were rolling through his twisted head: she'd been entirely too close to escaping for his comfort. He spun her around, pulling her back flush against his chest, his arm like an iron bar running from her waist to her shoulder and the hole in her side inflammed further as she bit back another gasp of pain.. Oh, that cheating goddamn bastard.

" _You're up early, doll," her Lover groaned, still drowsy, wrapping his arms around her as she watched the coffee pot slowly fill._

 _His warmth pressed against her from behind; safe and warm._

" _You didn't have to get up, Lover. I'll bring you a cup in bed," his hands dipped under her shirt, pulling her in and he whispered a kiss at the junction of her neck and shoulder._

" _Didn't come out here for that, sweetheart. You've been writing for days; I don't need coffee, I need my wife."_

 _His fingers traced down her sides to her hips, his mouth seeking her pulse as a single hand strayed to her belly then crept down to where she was still sore and empty and_ needing _him._

 _The coffee was cold when they'd finally ventured back out of their bedroom._

She almost allowed her weight to fall against him, he'd remembered what pressing himself against her back did to her. Lu just barely managed to keep her knees from buckling at the fluttering in her heart she couldn't stop or the butterflies in her stomach that just would not die. Then his lips ghosted down along the line of her neck and back up, heat bloomed at the apex of her thighs and she clenched her jaw to keep that moan of pure _need_ contained behind her teeth.

"I'll just have to fix that then," he groaned lewdly behind her ear and until that moment she'd completely forgotten where she was…and when. Son of a bitch.

Negan had all but reduced her to a quivering mess before more than four dozen people. At some point her eyes had fallen closed and when she snapped them open she saw everyone in the very large space still kneeling, eyes focused very intently on the concrete floor. King of all he surveyed, indeed. If Lu didn't know better she would swear no one in the entire cafeteria had so much as dared to lift their gaze, but morbid curiosity was bound to run rampant with someone like Negan running the show. It was getting caught that killed you, a lesson she knew all too well.

" _Lucy, where the fuck is it? If you've taken it, little girl, I'm going to beat the ever-loving shit out of you!"_

 _Her "guardian," the man the nice-smelling people brought her to, was mad again and she was scared. He wasn't a nice man. He wasn't a good man. He wasn't going to take care of her. He was big and mean and he hit the blonde lady who put "secret braids" in her hair when he wasn't home._

 _A tiny hand dug the knife out of her secret bag and she trembled in her hiding place behind the dresser._

" _Where the fuck is that goddamned kid?"_

 _As long as he didn't find her she would be okay; that's what the nice blonde lady said. When he smelled yucky it wasn't safe and she should hide with the knife._

 _Just don't ever get caught._

 _She got very good at hiding while she lived with the bad man._

"Good evening, all you motherfuckers!" Negan called out over his captive, kneeling audience and almost simultaneously they lifted their faces from the floor. "This fuckin' gorgeous gunmetal firecracker y'all see before you is mine. Anyone touches her, anyone makes a move on her, any-fuckin'-one of you looks like you're gonna help her get a move on out of here," then he brought the bat with it's barbed-wire wrapping down on the nearest table. The crash of it made everyone in the large room flinch. "My sweet girl's gonna drink up every one of you. Do I make myself fuckin' clear?"

"Yes, Negan," came their thunderous reply.

"Good, now get the fuck back to work!"

His arm loosened and Lu stumbled forward half a step before she caught herself; he'd take that as a sign of victory, too, putting her off balance. Had she not already counted every single person in this place as an enemy before his little public service announcement she might have been put off that they certainly couldn't be trusted now. In front of no less than fifty people, his people but strangers none-the-less, he'd put her on notice and in the same breath claimed her as his own.

Her fists clenched so tightly she could have sworn she felt the skin of her knuckles begin to split open. Then she rounded on him between one heartbeat and the next and bare-knuckle punched him solidly across his fucking presumptuous mouth. A sizeable thrill of momentary victory shot through her as his head snapped back.

"I'm not your property. I'm certainly not up for fucking claim. You don't goddamn own me, you scum-sucking bastard."

* * *

The floor of the dark cell was so cold it made her bones hurt, so cold she could swear that she'd never be warm again, a miserable cold that dug the warmth from beneath her skin and she shivered violently against the chill; she was determined to ask him for nothing. Lu knew what he was trying to do. In light of her knocking him for a whirl in front of the entire population in the work area he'd lost what small bit of mercy he had left for her in that moment. He was "punishing" her, or so he claimed. No, this was far too cruel for something as simple as punishment for undermining his authority. He was trying to break her.

His band of guard dogs, the "Saviors," had relieved her of both the stolen knife and handgun when he'd pulled her against his chest by her wrists. That asshole knew just how much she hated him doing that, trapping her front, blocking her sight. "Damn, I forgot just how hard you hit when you're mad," he laughed before a snarl lit over his face. "You're about to fuckin' wish you hadn't done that, doll," then he'd glared down at her, ignoring the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Turned out that if she had turned right after she'd escaped Doctor Carson and the Savior standing guard, she would have run across a line of cells. They had likely been used for hazardous materials storage before the world fell, but Negan, in this new-found depth of cruelty, had people locked away in them. In the old world Lu would have never thought him capable of throwing her in a dark, freezing, four-by-four foot cell. She never would have though he would ever have done something so senselessly cruel, especially after…

But Negan had demanded she hand over the clothes she had liberated from the shitbag she'd knocked out after he'd thrown her in. Lu had glared at him as she tore them off, determined not to set flame to the panic sitting on the edge of her consciousness; anger was so much hotter than panic and she'd need all the heat she could muster for what was to come. Panic was cold and viscous; panic would kill her.

"We don't take too kindly to stealing around here, doll." He'd held the boots she'd traded for, the pants, and the jacket close to his chest, his eyes lingering on her skin as he's just stood in the doorway; like he had been waiting for her to beg him not to shut her in.

Lu had held her chin up though and had started him down in return, blood running down her side from having ruined the doctor's good work. "But kidnapping people, holding them against their will, that's all good and well? You're a fucking hypocrite, Negan, once upon a long time ago I thought that kind of thing was beneath you."

Negan had taken a knowing step toward her, not the first sign of anger anywhere to be seen, "Don't make me do this, Lucille, you know I don't want to. Just promise me you won't run again." Because he had known she always kept her word; she was loud and "wild" but she had always been true.

In that moment, when she had closed the distance between them, she had watched his pupils dilate, knew he thought she would cave. Instead she had pushed him backward and beyond the walls of the cell, then growled, "Free up a hand and go fuck yourself. I'm not giving you anything, dickhead."

The snarl he'd let out and the slam of the door still rang in her ears over the music playing just outside on continual loop at deafening levels. Initially she sang along as loudly as she could, a poor substitute for Damian in truth; she knew them all, she'd written them. But once she had gotten through them and the first began again she'd gone completely silent before she began to scream. They were the songs she'd written for him, every single song she'd recorded, even the ones that never made it to the general public. So, she had screamed and raged and roared furiously until her throat was so raw it could have bled and when her voice was gone she had started in on attacking the door.

Now, days or weeks later, all Lu could do was lie curled up on the unforgiving floor, knuckles scabbing over, and ignore everything they brought her to eat or drink. _Don't eat it if it smells strange, not even if you're starving,_ another lesson she had learned young. The music played over and over, pulsing a blinding migraine behind her eyes. She couldn't feel her hands or her legs, was sick with hunger and dehydration and in the overwhelming darkness she relived every nightmare from before she'd finally run away from the bad man at thirteen years old.

Negan would knock on the door every few days, her only brief reprieve from the music and the memories, "You gonna run from me again, Lucille?"

And every time she'd shout as loudly as she possibly could, "Fuck off, Negan," then be thrown back into sensory deprivation to drown.

" _If you're going to act like an animal I'm going to lock you up like one!"_

 _The bad man threw her in a closet. The door wouldn't open, and the light was broken._

 _Screaming and clawing at the door._

 _Hunger gnawing in her stomach._

" _She's only a child!"_

" _That girl is goddamn wild and she'll stay in there until she stops acting like a fucking animal."_

 _The blonde lady's fingertips passing crackers through the gap between the bottom of the door and the hardwood floor._

" _Don't eat it if it smells strange, not even if you're starving."_

" _You ready to calm the fuck down, Lucy?"_

 _The door opening just a bit and she was growling, screaming, hitting anything to get it to open, to get out!_

" _Keep acting like a wild animal and I'm gonna put you down like one!"_

 _It was dark and she was alone and scared for a long, long time. The blonde lady stopped giving her crackers._

The heavy steel door opened again, and Lu's too sore eyes slit open; her skin, muscles, her _bones_ ached too much to move. But she heard Shitbird's smooth voice urging her to drink, to eat. It smelled funny but that could have been the blood in her mouth and with the last of her failing strength she turned away from the offering.

"Fuck, he's gonna kill someone."

Then the door closed, and the world was blessedly silent.

* * *

Negan was on his way back to his room, frustrated at Dwight's lack of progress with Daryl. If the fuckin' redneck would just damn _give in_ , he'd be the perfect fuckin' addition to his Saviors. But all Dwight could report was the redneck's constant threat that "if you've done anything to Lu, I'll fucking kill you," and damn if he couldn't use that kind of blind loyalty when it was pointed in the right direction.

Lucille though…he was half afraid this plan of his would fail, would break her beyond repair. He'd had her in the cell for a few days now, hoping that through extended sensory and contact deprivation she would give in and finally come back to him. So far, every time he'd asked she'd told him to fuck off, aside from the one conversation he'd been able to pull out of her only a few hours in.

" _Why go back out there, Sweetheart?"_

" _Why a harem of wives?" she hit back._

" _We're different people now, doll. This world changes everyone, it brings out the fundamental fucking truth of every single person."_

 _He needed to explain it to her, make her understand that this wasn't their life from before. That he wouldn't give up on her because she was different, and he needed her to not give up on him._

" _You were a cheating, unfaithful bastard before the apocalypse. So you've, what, amped up your game?"_

" _Each of them came with a deal, doll. Working for points is a real bitch if you don't have marketable, apocalypse skills; I get to knock off a piece with a few hot-as-hell ladies and they get to live in the lap of luxury. Don't have to work for points and their families are protected."_

 _She scowled and narrowed her eyes, "Of course, sexual goddamn deviant."_

" _You still think I'm that same asshole that broke your heart and betrayed you years ago; I understand and I'll never be able to make you see just how much I hate it. But I'm not him anymore, Lucille, and I won't risk losing you again. Not ever."_

" _You didn't lose me, you left me. So, go back to your fucking harem and leave me the hell alone, unimaginable asshole."_

" _There it is. You were always just a little vicious, almost too wild for the world but never too wild for me. Now that civilization's all but gone, that wild darkness in you has fuckin' taken over; it's why you always kept moving, why you wouldn't stay in a cookie-cutter house behind the walls of any community. That animal in you is more afraid of being trapped in a cage than dying alone."_

" _Let me out, Negan, or I swear I'll tear your fucking throat out!"_

He'd had Dwight and David fucking with the lights, messing with her sleep schedule and when she ate. Lucille's sense of time was probably so fucked up she'd think she'd been in that box for nearly a month instead of a scant few days. His Lost Girl was strong, though, and that was the problem; she'd break herself before she bent. They told him that at first she'd sang along with those songs, just fuckin' belted out the lyrics to every one of them; but then she'd started screaming and beating the holy hell out of the door.

"Like a wild fucking _animal_ ," Simon had told him, sounding almost impressed. "She beat the shit out of the door for _hours_."

Then, a day later, Simon had come back with another update from the cell guards, "She won't eat, Boss; won't eat, kicks over the water, attacks everybody who so much as opens the door."

Negan had laughed, his Lost Girl was fuckin' stubborn as hell, that was for sure. "Just keep it up; not even an animal will starve itself to death."

Simon had smirked and the days dragged on, he didn't ask about her again, certain that she'd give in on her own. But he'd just returned from a run, he'd been gone away for a day, and he was eager to see just what progress had been made in his absence.

"Boss!" came a panicked shout down the hall behind him.

Mother fucker, he just had a feelin' whatever this was about was going to kill his good mood. "This had better be important, Joey; you're keepin' me from knocking off a piece in any one of my five wives and man, oh man, does that just put me right the hell off." But when he turned slowly and say Fat Joey was out of breath from running, he knew for certain that something was seriously fuckin' wrong.

"Simon's down at the cells, he says he needs you, something about one of the prisoners," the Savior huffed, wheezing and gasping for air.

Trying his level best to keep his cool, Negan smirked, "What, Daryl finally change his mind?"

"No, sir. Simon said it's the Lost Girl; she's not doing so hot."

In that moment, Negan didn't give a good god damn if Fat Joey saw the unadulterated panic that gripped him. He'd forgotten a single, essential factor while he'd been waiting for Lucille to come 'round: an animal wouldn't starve itself to death because the animal didn't feel things like hate or pride. Lucille, no matter how wild or vicious, wasn't _just_ an animal, and would push against that part of her to fight him until she killed herself.

Before he knew it, his feet had taken him to the cells and Simon who waited in front of her door. His right hand man opened his mouth, maybe to explain what Negan would see when he opened that door, but wisely kept silent. He simply shook his head in a silent apology, geeked out grin long gone, and pulled the heavy slab of steel open, quickly stepping aside.

The first thing to catch Negan's attention were the dents in the steel and splatter of blood, but he knew locking her in a small, dark room would all but make his Lost Girl go feral. All the same, his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach as he turned into the cell and laid eyes on what his efforts had produced. His teeth grit so hard it made his jaw ache; he'd done this to her…

"How long?"

"Since the start, add to that how long she was out when we brought her here…a week at least for sure. Before we rounded up Alexandria, well…who knows." Simon scratched at his moustache. "David said she was attacking the door and whoever opened it when they tried to feed her. Apparently, she collapsed near to a day ago but by then she'd already scared the piss out of everyone."

Negan crouched before his Lucille as she lay curled in a tight ball on the floor; shivering purely because her body couldn't stop it at this point. Those gray eyes he loved so must stared silver and sightless into some middle space he couldn't reach. She didn't so much as flinch when he put a hand on her shoulder; goddamn, she was fucking freezing.

"Come on, Sweetheart, help me out here," he gently shook her, hoping it would jostle her from this catatonic state. Her body had all but shut down, something he'd only seen her do once before, to protect itself from what was happening to her. When she didn't move he nudged her just a tad harder, _come on, baby_ , then finally pulled her into his arms.

"Lover?" her smoky, cigar room voice cracked from beneath his chin and his breath caught in his lungs.

"There she is," he smiled against the crown of her head as she all but crawled beneath his skin, trying to get at the warmth coming off his body.

This was what he had needed since that last day he'd been to visit her in that fucking hospital: her curled against his chest like they were the last people alive. Lucille was the most capable woman he'd ever goddamn met and since he'd won her heart all those years ago was the only person she'd ever trusted with her vulnerability. And damn if it hadn't taken him for-fucking-ever to make her understand that she didn't need to crawl off to lick her wounds alone… So he pulled her closer, wrapping himself around her.

"Cold." It broke his goddamn heart to hear her voice so small, weak with hunger and thirst and hurt. "Cold...dark cage...why?" and she began to quake against him.

"Because you're not an animal, Sweetheart," Negan crooned to her in low tones, knowing that she had to have the world's worst migraine brewing in her brain. When he glanced to the door he saw Simon had wandered just far enough away to give him the privacy to help his Lost Girl come back, though not so far that he couldn't lend an assist if he was needed.

"Locked me up…just like him." If she'd had the energy, the strength, he knew she'd be fighting him tooth and nail; she'd absolutely lay him right the fuck out. She'd run to where he'd never find her…ever. Fortunately for him, she'd worn herself so low she'd couldn't so much as lift her head.

"No, doll," he assured her softly. "Not like him; he locked you up because he didn't understand, was afraid of you. I only locked up the animal to show you that the animal isn't all that you are." Then he pulled back and lifted her face; there was that shining steel gaze he remembered.

"We don't lick our wounds alone, Sweetheart, not as long as we're together. All you have to do is stay."

Those gray eyes narrowed into slits against the pain he knew she felt, "If I say 'no?'"

He smirked, recognizing her pushing his buttons from a mile off. "Then I'll know the animal still has more control than my Lost Girl and I'll keep waiting. I'm fuckin' patient like that, remember?"

Negan hadn't fallen in love with her just to make her into what he wanted, to fix her. No, she'd been fucking perfect when he'd lost himself in her eyes that first night. Lucille had never blamed him for his faults, never cast him aside when he'd tripped up or crawled all up and down her very last nerve. She'd always given just as good as he gave until he'd finally stopped dancing around her; because they were the only ones who could ever put up with each other.

"What do you say, Sweetheart?" he asked, quoting the exact words he'd breathed into her hair the night he'd asked her to marry him. "No one on earth will ever love you the way I do."

Just beneath the hurt and hunger, behind the redness of her eyes and the tears that gathered at their corners, the hint of a resignation caught in her expression and his heart sped up. "Pushy bastard," she barely managed to whisper, and he knew he'd finally won.


	5. Chapter 5

**_AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm super duper sorry it took this bleeding long to get this chapter out;it fought me at every turn. Also, if you've not read chapters 1 - 4 recently, I've made some heavy edits so it'd probably be a good idea to go back and read them again for some context._**

 _Lucille was a god before a writhing mass of a thousand supplicants as he watched her play from backstage. He'd been one of them, still was one of them, helpless in the face of her black magic witchcraft. That long, dark hair a cloak down her back, and tight, torn jeans, an old Metallica concert tee-shirt, and black work boots were her armor. The guitar in her hands, the guitar was her sword, her lightening bolt, her scythe._

 _Fuck he loved that woman and damned if he knew why she loved him just as much._

 _Lucille had put off touring until his football season was won, and now, in the still heat of a late summer night, until lights that made her goddamn glow, he couldn't question that she loved him. Sure, she had insisted on filling their home with plants and refused to buy anything brand new if it was something she could fix or salvage, but in spite of her blatant hate for the cold death of winter she bundled up against the biting wind and came out to every game with that fucking baseball bat. And yeah, she'd told him over and over to "live in the moment, Lover, there's nothing serious between us anyway" only to marry him three years after the first time he'd ever seen her play._

 _It was moments like these, making magic for "her people" where he saw just how much of herself she set aside for him. On a stage, a guitar in her hands, fuck she was really something and it never ceased to see her in a light of awe and wonder. Negan wasn't a poet or a philosopher or any of that shit, but this woman pulled at his soul and made him…better._

" _For our last song…fuck, Lu, you fuckin` worked us to death to get this one just right."_

 _The vocalist, Damian, was a complainer if ever Negan had seen one, but something in the other man`s face as he glanced in his direction made Negan pause. Damian was never one to complain about writing or time spent on getting a project just right, often keeping the band at the studio for time spans as long as Lucille`s writing benders. Lucille herself had called him the "Perfectionist Nazi" on more than a dozen occasions when she'd curl up against his back late at night after a session had dragged on hours longer than scheduled. But on the stage his gorgeous girl just grinned at Damian, a gleam and a_ secret _in her eyes as a tech moved up to place a microphone and stand in front of the woman who_ never _sang._

" _Our Lu here wrote a song for her… I'm not fucking calling him that, Lu," Damian droned on but Negan only had eyes for his Lucille, who was_ up to something _._

 _She laughed and looked right at him, something she'd told him she was "never supposed to do" because looking at someone on the side of the stage where the audience couldn't see took their attention off the show. His Lucille had never cared about their rules anyway and she gave words to what Damian would not say in front of the writing mass of thousands: "My Silver fox Lover." The thousands lost their collective shit, cheering and screaming her name, but Negan`s hear fuckin` flipped in its place beneath his ribcage._

 _Then to the crowd she laughed as she took a new stance, shifted her weight and goddamn caressed the guitar in her hands. "I don't sing, guys, but it's my anniversary and fuck you crazy bitches if you cant take it."_

 _The first strains played and his breath caught against his throat as she breathed out the first lines:_

" _If you take a step towards me_

 _You will take my breath away_

 _So I'll keep you close_

 _And keep my secret safe."_

 _Everything kind of fell away as she played, the stage, her band and the crowd, the heat of the night and the lights and the residual noise until it was just her, playing the silver guitar he'd watched her scrape her pennies together and save for in that first three years. His Lucille at her best, in her world, giving a piece of it to him._

 _Damn, he sure as shit didn`t deserve her._

 _Then the last notes reverberated through the cabinets at her back and he was running out from backstage to get to her. One hand at her hip, the other at the back of her neck to pull her up and_ in _as her fingers threaded into his hair; her guitar falling before her, secured by the leather strap he'd had made weeks ago. His mouth on hers, her chest heaving, their skin-on-skin haven and he was lost in her touch. They broke apart for breath and he touched his forehead to hers, breathing her lavender and sandalwood scent into deprived lungs._

 _Lucille`s silverite eyes sparked and darkened with lust for him and he grinned right back until he saw the stain of red at her mouth. Negan`s hands flew up to cradle her face as her gaze lost focus and the red at the corner of her mouth dribbled down her chin. She collapsed forward as her eyes fluttered and his heart fucking crashed like a damn train wreck as she fell through him. He twisted to catch her but then he was standing before the e open door of the cell he'd condemned her to._

" _Lucille?" he called brokenly, remembering exactly what had happened for weeks after she'd collapsed on the last stage she ever played._

" _You locked me in here to break me," her dark, cigar smoke voice cracked against dehydration and hunger and sickness. Veins dark, bruise-black beneath paper-thin skin, she practically vibrated with the cold against the cinderblock wall and concrete floor._

" _Sweetheart, no. I didn't want to hurt you. I'd never hurt you like that, I-"_

" _You_ swear _?" his Lost Girl sneered, crouching now on the freezing floor and Negan could see the animal he'd hoped to kill snarling behind her eyes. It was coiled muscles, teeth and claws bared to rip him into pieces; tear his fucking throat out. "You're a monster,_ Negan _."_

 _He squatted down, arms outstretched to pull her into him. To save her from the cruelty he'd subjected her to, from the soulless thing he'd become out of desperation and fear and shame. But she turned and writhed beneath his fingers, muscled contorting and shifting._

" _You're just like_ him _," and then the predator beneath her skin pounced._

* * *

It was still dark as Lucille woke slowly, digging her way out from beneath the avalanche of a drug-induced sleep, and as the fog burned off she took stock of her surroundings. The room itself didn't belong in this world for the same reason the people and homes in Alexandria didn't; they were from the world before, soft and clean and grand. Only people truly audacious would sit in the lap of such grandeur and parade it as something to aspire to.

 _King Dickhead, indeed_ , she thought with a huff.

Vaulted ceiling, chandelier, pristine walls as far as she could tell in the dim light, and all to house the bed that felt like a marshmallow. It pulled her in, conforming around her like a mud hole without a solid bottom. But it wasn't a mud hole, it was just a mattress, and pulling herself free after having fallen in wouldn't necessitate a quick dip in the first body of water she could find. Her abdominal muscles burned as she fought to sit up, hot and angry beneath her skin as they protested the movement; but she pushed through it with gritted teeth until she sat properly upright.

A groan sounded out from beside her on the bed and a body shifting in sleep threw off her balance for a moment, making her vision swim. But there was no mistaking that voice, that face, his hand tightening on her thigh, and the smell of him. He rolled into her legs, rubbing his bearded face against her thigh and pressing a kiss to the skin.

"Hey there, baby," Negan groaned into her thigh.

Lu took a breath, looking around the room in its opulence, "Why am I here, Negan?"

"Just want to jump right into it first thing in the morning, huh?" he grumbled, shoving away rolling away from her to lie on his back on the opposite side of the bed.

Of course he didn't want to talk about this again, he never did like arguing with her, not before the world fell and apparently that trend was going to continue. She narrowed her eyes and looked down at him, rubbing his face and smoothing his hair out of his eyes. "What happened that night? On the road, the group I was with, after you had Shi- … Simon bring me here, what happened?"

"Doll…" he sat up beside her and scooted toward her, hand at her face to catch her grey eyes with hazel. "They're fine, we made a deal and they're fine. Okay?"

"Why did you go after them in the first place?" she pulled his hand from her cheek, refusing to let him distract her because she needed to know just what the he'll she'd landed in the middle of. "You didn't know I was there, I didn't even know if I was going to get back to Alexandria the morning before… So why go after them?" She'd hunted down Wolves and Claimers for the past few years, people that took and killed and hurt people for no other reason than they thought it was their right to do so; in her soul she hoped that wasn't what her husband had become, but she needed to know.

"Rick and his pals attacked one of my outposts; they killed everyone," he stated matter-of-factly.

"What?" because she knew Rick and Michonne and the rest of them, they couldn't have possibly-

"Oh, yeah," Negan went on. "Your buddy Rick attacked us first, all this is just…evening up the board."

"No, I know Rick, I've travelled with them for months, just-"

"Well he did 'just', Lucille," he was just this side of shouting, but she shook her head because what he was saying didn't make any sense. "He took his people in the middle of the night and took out my outpost, killed over twenty of _my_ people!"

Lu pressed her hands to her eyes, trying to rationalize it out, trying to figure what would drive Rick to do something so desperately insane if Negan hadn't provoked him first. She'd been in Alexandria when the dead from the quarry had broken through, had arrived just after the Wolves had broken through the walls of Alexandria, had spent every visit after trying to teach Carl how to shoot accurately without depth perception… But never once had Rick mentioned Negan or that his people had attacked them, not until she'd come back this last time. He'd told her about Jesus and Hilltop and Gregory…

"Look, doll, enough about all that right now, okay?" Negan asked as she dropped her hands to her lap, he brushed a newly braided length of her hair behind her shoulder and laid a kiss to the bare skin. "The doc said you'd need to eat, he's given you a few IV's to get you hydrated but you'll have to get something on your stomach. Maybe walk around a bit if you're up to it today, get some strength back."

Lu cocked a speculative, suspicious eyebrow at him, "You're not gonna lock me up in your tower? Color me surprised."

Negan laughed outright, "No, doll, a princess you most certainly fuckin` aren't. As much as I want to lock you away though, I know all you'd do is rebel against it, so consider this my fuckin` vinegar versus honey compromise. But you sure as shit aren't leavin`, doll, not without me with you and not until you are one hundred percent fuckin` better. The Saviors will watch out for you and you'd best believe they'll stop you if you go getting into anything you fuckin` shouldn't."

"So instead of a princes I'm a prisoner… Very flattering, Lover," Lu grumbled. It wasn't they freedom from this place that she wanted, but at least he hadn't locked her back in the cell as before. With the ability to walk around she could get a lay of the land, some kind of intel on exactly what kind of operation he was running here, and just maybe figure a way to end this madness between him and Rick before it got out of hand.

Negan framed her face between his hands, making her meet his gaze once more, "Baby, I'd make you the goddamn queen of this place if I though for a second you'd stay. You're a stubborn, sneaky bitch that had a hard time starting in one place for any amount of time, I married you knowing that. But you're mine until the end of time, so I'm keeping you."

Lu placed her hands over his, threading their fingers together, "What am I meant to do then? Wander the walls of your castle like a ghost?"

He smiled softly, pulling her hands to his face and running his lips over the bruised knuckles lightly, kissing away the pain of her self-inflicted hurt. "Take today, walk around and see what I've built. Hell , sweetheart, you might just be fuckin' impressed." Then a spark lit up in his eyes, "I've got something for you, something I've been saving, I'll have a few of the workers bring it up later."

With a shake of her head she pulled her hands from his, flexing her fingers to test the strain against her bruised knuckles, and carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed. She stood up on unsteady legs, breaching her weight against the mattress with the less injured arm, and she hated that she was this fucking weak. In an instant Negan was there, uncaring that he wrote only a pair of boxer briefs, concern painted on his face as he held her upright; one hand at her shoulder, the other on her hip, careful not to trespass to near to the healing wound in her side. He pressed his fingers into her skin, gazing unapologetically over her dressed only in a small pair of underwear and a camisole that she hadn't arrived in, looked at her like he still couldn't quite believe she was real.

"Damn, baby, you look beautiful," he all but whispered, as though speaking too loudly would make her disappear or wake him from a dream.

But she was caught up in him, too, the heat of his hands, the need in his eyes, the expanse of skin coating long, lean muscle, the leather and oak smell of him. Lu could _feel_ her eyes dilate, het heart begin to race, her skin warming at his touch. So when he stepped closer she didn't retreat and his hand ran up from her shoulder to the back of het neck, twisting into her hair. Then his head dipped down to capture her mouth with his own and her breath caught in her throat.

It was sparks and fire and pure, undiluted need as everything she'd ever loved about him reignited in the space between them. His lips slid against hers desperately, the tip of his tongue flicking at the seam of her mouth for just a taste, just one. Then she opened to him, seeking out his tongue with her own, met it, matched it, _needed_ to taste him, too because in that small, singular moment he had been right. Neither of them would ever be loved by anyone else as fiercely as they were by each other.

Negan drank her in, poured the years of his need for her, his desperation and loneliness and ferocity into her mouth with every stroke of his tongue against hers. Then his hand at her hip drew up to the dip of her waist and he pulled her into him, and lightening struck a shock of pain through her side so sudden that it punched the air from her lungs on a strangled gasp. The sharpness of it struck her in the throat and she pushed him away with one hand while the other braced her side, breath hiding between her teeth to keep from screaming.

"Fuck, doll, I'm sorry," Negan stated, hooking her upright once again, though this time due to his own thoughtlessness. "I wasn't fuckin` thinkin` straight… never could around you when you're all half-dressed like that."

Lu waved him off, standing under her own power after a few moments of lightheadedness. "It's fine, I'm fine. You have any clothes for me to wear so as you'll start thinking with your brain again instead of your dick?"

"Oh, doll, I wasn't lookin` to move that fast but of you want to bring my dick into it, well I'd be _mightily_ unopposed," he grinned at her with a haughty leer.

"Keep it in your drawers, Lover," she commanded, pushing lightly against his chest. "Clothes?"

He swiped his thumb over her shoulder, still helping to keep her upright on her feet, "Through that door beside you there's a bathroom. Take a hot shower, get some of that fuckin` grit of you, there's a set of clothes on the counter. I've got some things to take care of today, I'll come find you later."

Lu nodded, waiting as he backed away from her and headed to the dresser. Waited as he took his time and meticulously dressed for the day. Waited until he was standing before her again in those grey hands and black boots, white shirt and leather jacket, belts wrapped around his hips and a red scarf around his neck.

A hand caressed her face, "We'll talk tonight, doll, I promise." Then he pressed a kiss to het hairline, touched his forehead to hers, and left to the sun fully risen outside the windows.

"Always thinking with your dick, gullible, stupid asshole."

* * *

Overall the Sanctuary and its grounds had been shocking easy to navigate and map out, even with the Saviors casting suspicious, nervous looks at her when she ran across them. They were the only people here with weapons and thereby easy enough to recognize and summarily avoid. The hot shower that morning had been a welcome relief against the bruises and sore muscles and healing wounds; the gun shots at her thigh and abdomen were healing well despite the stain she'd put on them who knew how long ago. The clothes Negan left were clean and in good condition, she rolled the sleeves of flannel shirt up to her elbows and jeans that were only a little worn in as evidenced by the frayed hole behind the thigh, but both were a welcome change from the thin material she'd relegated herself to before. The workers of the Sanctuary could certainly use better quality clothes themselves if their current condition was any indicator of the status quo.

Lu had run across more than a few of the workers as she made her way steadily through the levels of Negan's fortress, helped an older woman to carry her wares to the marketplace, the production floor that she'd initially found. The woman had thanked her profusely and offered her wares as payment, but Lu waved her of with a smile and continued on. She ran across a pack of several children running rampant, tried to avoid them but once they had seen her they all but ran her down, eager to know why their parents wanted them to be wary of her.

"Are you one of the monsters from outside?" a little redheaded girl asked through the gap in her front teeth. "My daddy says there's monsters outside, but I never saw a monster."

"Don't be dumb, Lulu, the monsters outside are dead," an older boy mocked.

"Yeah, and they'll eat your face!"

"Don't wander outside, Lulu, or you'll get eaten, too."

The other children had laughed along with the boy and run off to cause some sort of chaos elsewhere, but the little girl stayed beside Lu with her face towards the ground snuggling back an onslaught on tears. Lu knelt down in front of her, mindful of the pull in her side, and wiped the girls tears from her cheeks.

"Are you okay, sweetie?" she asked to the girl's continued sniffles.

"They're always so mean to me," and the tears began anew.

In a strange twist of coincidence Lu was immediately reminded of Abraham, how her called he "Lulu" and his red hair, she missed him and their poker nights. A grin stole into the corner of her mouth as she brushed the little girls hair away from her face, and her heart broke in half at this little girl who cried to a stranger.

"Bigger kids are always mean, but can I tell you a secret?" she asked, leaning close to little Lulu.

Three little girls hair bobbed as she nodded quickly, eager to know whatever special thing this grownup knew that she didn't.

"Being mean turns people into trolls," she whispered and the little girl gasped.

"Really?"

"Really. So the next time they're mean to you just think about what ugly trolls they're going to turn into."

For the next little while Lu and the girl bantered back and forth, because what did a troll look like, did it have warts, was it bald? They decided that trolls were ugly and gray and their skin fell off and they were fat, they had big nasty warts, and only the girl's went bald, the boys had hair growing out of their nose and ears. By the time Lulu's tears were dry and her face wasn't red from crying they were both laughing and a man was calling for the girl.

"What's your name?" the little girl asked before she ran off.

"My friends call me Lu," she told her, still kneeling on the cold floor because trying to stand up was going to be awful.

"Everyone calls me Lulu but I'm not a baby anymore and I don't like it," the little girl had proclaimed.

"Well what should I call you then?"

And just before she ran off, the girl leaned down and whispered in her ear, "My name's Lucy."

The shock of hearing that name again followed Lu for an hour, down the hall and to the cafeteria where she ate her breakfast alone, and through the halls as she mapped the fortress out in her head. It sat like a stone in her stomach as she wandered, catching glimpses of maps and snippets of conversion, piecing together the puzzle that was Negan's operation. By the time she made it upstairs she was all but a nervous wreck, the eyes and whispers of Negan's Saviors following her like they knew how to break her. The quiet of the deserted hall gave her a much-needed moment to catch her breath and center herself.

 _He's dead, Lu,_ she chided herself. _He's dead and he can't hurt you again._ But sometimes childhood monsters follow you when you're the one hiding in the closet to get away from them.

"So you're what all the fuss was about then," came a feminine sneer from the other end of the hall, echoing of the concrete and steel. It belonged to a short-haired, blonde woman, one of his wives if she had to guess given the little black dress and hooker heels.

Lu stepped away from where she had leaned against the wall, stood her ground as the woman advanced on her, the click, click, click of her heels heralding her approach. The absurd sway of her hips and the fat at her arms told Lu all she needed to know about the woman a few steps from her: she was spoiled and useless, soft in a way that was better left in the old world. _No marketable apocalypse skills, indeed_ , she thought with a snuff of a laugh.

The woman went to circle around her but Lu moved counter, she'd be damned if she let this slag get the upper hand. So for a dozen paces they circled each other, barely an arm-length apart, until the _wife_ stopped clearly having had enough. A sneer crossed the woman's face and her arm snapped up to grab at Lu's hair. In a split second that was purely instinctive reaction, Lu shot forward into the woman's space, shocking her into flinching away.

 _Just another uppity bitch._

"Jesus Christ," the blonde swore. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

Lu crossed her tattooed arms across her chest, feet shoulder-width apart, "You don't know me and we aren't friends. Don't _fucking_ touch me."

The woman shifted hips, rolling her eyes and canting her shoulders. "You're pretty enough, I suppose, certainly not enough to get the big man all riled up like you did. Maybe it's the tattoos," she inspected Lu head to boot, speculatively. "Maybe it's the long hair, something to wrap around his hands when he fucks you. Out maybe it's just the chase… I don't see your appeal, honestly."

Lu didn't move an inch as the woman spoke, she knew what she was trying to do, but she wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of rising to the bait.

"But understand this," the snotty woman continued, and Lu wanted to punch her in the sinuses to free up whatever was making her voice so goddamn nasally. "Even if he does fuck you, it won't last. He'll have his fun and toss you aside like yesterday's garbage. He's _my_ husband, and you're nothing. So don't get comfortable."

Cocking an eyebrow at the woman, "Yeah, you're done." Lu snorted sharply and made her way past the blonde woman, back down the hall to the stairs because that topped off her quota for daily bullshit.

But this broad apparently didn't have a sense for self-preservation because she grabbed at Lu's arm insisting, "I'm _not_ done," and tugged hard.

In an instant , Lu twisted her arm out of the woman's grasp, braced one hand on the blonde's shoulder and the other at her throat and pushed sharply, throwing the ridiculous little slag off her balance. She frog-walked her backwards, heedless of the woman's hands clawing at her forearms, until the blonde's back slammed up against the wall.

"No, you're done," Lu bared her teeth at the blonde in sneer. "This is a warning, and the last one you'll get, so I'll say it again since you're either deaf or unforgivably stupid: don't _fucking_ touch me. Do it again and we'll see what your appeal is without half your face." She squeezed a little tighter, feeling the sinew and muscle and bone in the woman's neck shift and pop, letting her know that she was right there, she could kill her. Then she let go and pushed the blonde away to stumble a few steps.

"You can't hurt me, I'm Negan's wife. If you do anything to me he'll put you down like the animal you are."

But the little slag was quaking in her heels, even with her shoulders back and her spine straight and her dander up, she was scared shitless. Good, maybe she'd finally catch a fucking hint.

"Run away, princess, here there be monsters."

As the woman spun on her heel and click, click, clicked away, Lu walked up to one of the barred, dingy windows and took a breath. Her fingers digging into the sill because she still felt fucking betrayed and that little encounter only solidified the fact he hadn't changed. He still wanted every slice of pretty, pretty pie and easy every one of them.

"Bastard son of a whore," she cursed on a whisper, leaning her forehead against the glass.

Her attention was drawn to a commotion outside, just beyond the fence where she'd seen people before, chaining up the dead like dogs to ward off or attack potential invaders. Wafflestain was out there with three or four men dressed in dingy yellow sweat suits, one of the dead had come loose and they were having trouble getting it onto the fence without anyone being bitten. Of course they were having a hard time, wrangling the dead was inherently dangerous, especially if you smelled like you were alive. But they got it chained and turned to head back to the building housing the infirmary and the cells and…

Lu's heart skipped as she took note of the lanky brown hair and the narrowed eyes of one worker that kept casting glares at the Wafflestain herding the group inside. She pushed away from the window and flew down the stairs, mindful of her route so she didn't run into any of the Saviors because she'd land herself in a world of trouble if Negan found out she went snooping about. But she had to know, had to make sure…

Through the lower office area she ran and out the back door until she was sprinting across the pavement between the two buildings and into the side door of the smaller one. The burn in her thigh was unforgiving and her fist punched into her side to keep stitches from forming as she hauled her weak, wounded ass up a stairwell and across the building on the unused third floor then down the exterior emergency exit and back inside just across the cells. The Saviors watching the cells were preoccupied playing a game of poker as she snuck past, listening for more of them up the hallway.

Then she saw the Wafflestain and the worker he had in his charge around a corner. There were doors leading to other rooms and one that lead to the main stairwell, she could knock the Savior out and grab the worker, see if it was who she feared it was… But the Savior saved her some trouble, he pushed open the door to the stairwell and behind it Lu saw a flash of skin, a black dress, and brown hair.

 _Thank you_ , Lu sighed in relief.

She rushed toward the worker on silent feet, grabbed the arm of his sweat suit and pulled with everything she had. Opening one of the doors as he struggled against her but she managed to haul him in and shut the door.

"What the hell?" he grumbled and she knew that gravelly voice. "Lemme go- Lu?"

Daryl pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms tight around her back and she wrapped her own arms around his waist. They pulled away from each other after a moment, Lu smoothed his hair away from his face, taking stock of his injuries. They pressed their foreheads together, eyes closed and breathing deep, Daryl let out a long-held breath of pure relief. As though she was a calm harbor in the midst of a raging hurricane.

"Gods, Daryl, what happened? What have they done to you?" she demanded, outraged at the state of him.

"Negan brought me with them, back here. I hit 'I'm after they took you and…" he trailed off, looking anywhere but at her.

Lu snorted, "Yeah, we're both just making friends at every turn, aren't we?" She touched her fingertips to the blackness blooming around his eye, she'd have to do something about this, especially if they were keeping him prisoner in one of those fucking cells. "What happened? Is everyone okay?"

He looked down at the floor, taking get hands in his and teaching her bruised knuckles with his thumbs. She dipped her head down, craning her neck to try and make him look at her, tell her what was going on so she didn't walk in blind again. "Daryl, what happened?"

"He killed Abraham, beat him to death with the bat, then Glenn after I…"

Lu felt her jaw go slack and her heart stopped altogether as her blood ran cold.

Darryl pressed on, "He's taking from Alexandria now, says he wants half 'a everything they got only half's what he says it is. Had Dwight kill Denise, they'll be starvin' if they don't find more food."

The only doctor they really had was dead, Judith and Carl were just children, the people in Alexandria had thrived on what she'd brought for months and they didn't know how to survive without the things that made them soft in the first place. Not just ammunition and medicine but tools and food and clothes. She pulled herself together, "If I know Rick he's gonna do something dangerous. Okay, I need a little time, but I can get you out-"

"You're coming with me," he insisted, gripping her hands tighter, finally meeting her eyes.

"No, not yet," he opened his mouth to interrupt but she kept on. "Me versus you, Negan wants me here more; if I get you out then there's a chance he won't go after you even if he wants you here for something. If I leave he'll tear apart every community under his thumb until he finds me."

"No, Lu. No, if I go you gotta come with me. I don't care why he wants you, we'll keep you safe," and she knew he just didn't _get it_ yet because he took another step toward her until they were barely a breath apart.

"You can't. You can't keep me safe. If he knows I'm alive there's nowhere he won't go, no-one he won't kill to bring me back," and it burned her inside and out because Daryl was finally seeing the whole picture.

"Why?"

Her throat burned and her eyes stung and she didn't want to cry in front of him because this was _her fault_ now. "Because I'm Lucille."

He backed away from her like she'd just torn his heart from his chest, like she'd _known_ all of these events were going to unfold. "You're his wife," he affirmed on a whisper.

Her voice barely kept from wobbling as she backed up to the door, "That was a long time ago and I _need_ for you to trust me now." Her hand found the door knob and she motioned him forward because they were running out of time and the Wafflestain couldn't know that shed found Daryl or they would both be in very real trouble. "I'll do everything I can to get you out with enough information to make a difference so you can _stop this_."

Then she pulled the door open and the hallway was empty, the low grumbling of Daryl's warden sounding off from the main stairwell he'd snuck into. She stepped out and waited until Daryl had gone back to his mop and bucket before she pulled the door closed quietly and turned to head back in the direction she'd come from. He may never forgive her for having been married to Negan in the old world, never forgive her for the things that had been done to him since that night, but she resolved to make it right.

"Lu," Daryl called out as she went to turn the corner. She halted mid-step and cat a glance over her shoulder, "Be careful, darlin'."

She smiled tightly and nodded once, "Stay safe."


End file.
